At home we didnt talk about religion. So gradually the question faded away by itself and disappeared from the agenda. When I was nineteen my father died; my response to his death was atheistic.

There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major.

My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

Formalism is music that people don't understand at first hearing.

I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

I want nothing better, more flexible or more complete than the sonata form, which contains everything necessary for my structural purposes.

My mother had to explain that one couldnt compose a Liszt rhapsody because it was a piece of music that Liszt himself had composed.

Sometimes a dream can appear more real than reality itself.

It ain't what people call you. It's what you answer to.

Every spark returns to darkness. Every sound returns to silence. Every flower returns to sleep with the earth. The journey of the sun and moon is predictable. But yours, is your ultimateart.

The greatest tragedy of life is not that men perish but that they cease to love.

If a car comes past me in a traffic jam with a boom box going, I jump out of my skin. Those big booming basses. I'm just more sensitive to noise these days.

The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.

Call me Elf......one more time!

Royalty puts a human face on the operations of government.

I lived up on Kanan and Mulholland. It's a bit of a drive, but once you get there, the horses, vineyards, it's just so peaceful.