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

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.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: "Every day!"

The shrewd marry for money, the scheming marry for status, the calculating marry for power, but the wise marry for love.

David Beckham is not bigger than the Galaxy.

I would rather be hated every damn day of my life for being real than loved for being something I'm not.

To tell an adult exactly what steps to take towards his salvation was apt to weaken him. It deprived him of his inalienable right to trial and error which was tonic to the character.

The Oscars are a really strange concept to me, that films and acting can be competing against each other. We're not running the same race. It's like we're all doing different sports in fact.

Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.

I don't think we should speak so much. What if we were singing a song? We split, whilst singing.

I kind of have the most amazing fans ever. They are the most committed, passionate people, and I love them so much.

I respect Georges St. Pierre as a businessman and an athlete. I don't have anything against him personally. But he's not the kind of fighter I like watching.