I’ve always been spontaneous and outgoing… I’ve tried lots of things so I’ve got some good life experiences, which is great ’cause it means I’ve got lots of material to work with as an actor.

Never be ashamed to write a melody that people remember.

I distrust anything that you don’t hear.

What it looks like on paper may be interesting enough, but what the listeners hears is ultimately what stays with him, that he is concerned with.

My mother is a walking miracle.

We need not destroy the past. It is gone.

In postscript let’s just say that I am very fortunate cause I’ve gotten to work with a lot of great bands!

I got attention by being funny at school, pretending to be retarded, and jumping around with a deformed hand.

Because I was small, I was getting the hell kicked out of me playing football.

A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide.

Some I made, that I definitely wanted in a certain way, and some I simply decided to leave to the discretion, to the impact of the performer, himself.

I was always the kid in school who tried to get attention, not necessarily the class clown, but I’d do little unexpected performances.

The music is the last thing I’m thinking about right now, in order of what’s important.

Hey bands, you’re all welcome to fly me to some exotic location and I’ll record you there, Y’know that right? You don’t have to come to this God forsaken place. Hope I can visit you...

When I was speaking about communicating, I meant that the listener – we have to reach the listener; otherwise, of course, you’re writing the piece, as I say, only for the satisfaction of seeing it...

The good thing about acting is that it always keeps you on your toes… It’s not like any other job where you can go in and do the same thing as yesterday.

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.

In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor.

I really don’t know what I’m doing… I don’t. It’s terrible. I go in there and I learn how to be like the character and do the best I can, and that’s all I really...

He told me, ‘Don’t give me an album of pop songs like people will expect, songs that will get played on the radio. Take some risks.’

Because essentially Schoenberg was an extremely gifted man. And in spite of many of his theories and so on, when he really began to write music, he still was guided very much by his internal...

The danger of that – and there’s a grave danger that I, myself, have to be very aware of – is that you become so involved and intrigued in the language that sometimes you lose...

I want to be a jerk like the rest of my friends, and have fun, and not care about the consequences, but I just can’t now.

I felt alienated at school, and I never did well with girls.

I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very complicated, there’s really a push to the world to try...

Yes, well, I tell you, because once I have completed a work, I simply am interested only in what I may hear in the next work that’s coming.

I didn’t know what types of movies I wanted to do. I want to do things that are different. I want to take my time with each role.

The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

Most modern stuff I hear kinda sucks, someone should turn me onto something good, fast!

My dad’s probably one of the kindest people in the world. When I was younger that’s not how I was- I was a little spoiled brat.

I couldn’t get out of town fast enough, to go and hide. I went down to Delmar, north of San Diego, and pretty well did nothing for a year, just hibernated.

Besides merely some pleasure that we get out of the combinations of pitches together and lines, I think that there is some satisfaction that we get in the fact of having this diffuse thing organized...

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

Being dubbed as a hunk sort of annoys me. It gives me a yucky feeling.

If listeners aren’t carried away to Heaven,I’m failing.

I am on sabbatical as of right now, been too busy to think of about my OWN needs as of late.

You write it down because finally, when it’s written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.

Meryl Streep does things I would never have thought possible… Her presence on screen is outstanding.

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

It doesn’t matter how far I may have carried some of the things, but I always pull back at the point where it ceases any longer to really be music.

My career should adapt to me. Fame is like a VIP pass wherever you want to go.

I recorded the song live in front of an orchestra, and yes, I was very moved, I was in tears.

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

There are some people, by the way, that associate a certain amount of visualization with the performance of music. Those are people that really are not centrally concerned only with music, the traditional things.

Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act.

At times I might play some kind of folkloric flute, although I didn’t play those with the frequency or the skill then as I do now.

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

To believe in love, to be ready to give up anything for it, to be willing to risk your life for it, is the ultimate tragedy.

The new limitations are the human ones of perception.

We go on multiplying our conveniences only to multiply our cares. We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties.