Composition is frozen improvisation.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.

Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.

Sin is all wrong doing.

He was leaving my stepmother for a sailboat. Not that I blamed him. A sailboat would at least be useful.

Are not my days few? Cease then and let me alone that I may take comfort a little Before I go to the place from which I shall not return.

To foster inner awareness, introspection, and reasoning is more efficient than meditation and prayer.

Do not consider painful what is good for you.

IF ANYONE DESERVES TO CARRY A GRUDGE, IT’S CHRIST. BUT INSTEAD, HE CARRIED A CROSS.

Don't think I am going to let Bob Hoskins take all his clothes off and me not take a look? I just had a quick look up and down, like you would.

My parents were gardeners themselves, and perforce they used environmental techniques because it was during the war, and you didn't have the new sorts of chemicals.

As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.

We're not mere spectators, or a cosmic accident, or some sideshow, or the Greek chorus to the main event. The human experience IS the main event.