A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It's useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.

If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.

NBC's The West Wing is an icon for bad stories; Gitmo is a place where we keep an eye on evil, dangerous people who want to kill us.

I'm happy, but there is always room for improvement.

It's a whole different kind of anxiety. But the great thing about doing a theatre job is that once the ball starts rolling you just have to go with it, it's inexorable.

The next MVP of the Super Bowl is just as likely to have been a full-time grocery store bagger last year as a Heisman Trophy winner.

Every year is vital in the life of a child.

This is an issue that has an exceedingly high number of threads in it. It involves race, it involves culture, it involves crime, it involves justice.

It must have been the lack of nutrients that gave my father his temper. He is not a sweet man despite a very sweet tooth.

My God. Is there some unwritten law that you guys have to be giants? (Amanda) What can I say? Artemis likes her Dark-Hunters tall. Short men need not apply. (Acheron)

The beauty of the landscape - where sand, water, reeds, birds, buildings, and people all somehow flowed together - has never left me.