Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not.

It's true that I tend to daydream. I'm the same person in business as I am in music: I can be distracted and absentminded. It's my style.

I just have to take my chances like any other composer.

I feel that I belong to the 19th century. Some composers' music is very topical. It almost says, 'This is about what I read in newspapers yesterday.' Not mine.

I see only adaptations - not revolutions.

Ive managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me - music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. Its all about ideas.

If you have more money than you need, you have to give it away. It's a duty. I get to choose whom to sponsor, and I like to give to the areas that I know something about.

My music is all about an idealistic human personality. I have 19th-century ideals.

My father was so much more than an accomplished businessman.

I've had every advantage in the world, despite the 18 years of silence which were nobody's fault but mine.

Nicolette, Kendalle, and Alexandra are my children. Their mother, Cynthia Beck, and I, love them very much.

My heart isn't big enough to care for the oppressors.

Of course, I would like to play the guy next door, but nobody's going to hire me for that kind of role.

Doubt is the vestibule of faith.

Your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.

Once I learned to swim, I learned that there were waves.

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

The most successful people reach the top not because they are free of limitations, but because they act in spite of their limitations

My end goal in the piano is to play Scott Joplin's 'Maple Leaf Rag.

I always tried to hit the ball back through the box because that is the largest unprotected area.

There's nothing more fundamentally disruptive to the status quo than a new reality.