I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

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.

You want to become a better person?Just give thanks. Give thanks for all of it.

You don’t have to worry about getting the attention of others when you’re good at what you do.

I don't really consider myself a female director, and I don't want to do so for other women. Female directors are just directors.

Deja vu is one of the weirdest things that happens to me. It boggles my mind.

Whatever you want to do,do it now.

It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.

My kid gets me out of bed in the morning.

But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.

By meditation we develop that strength within us, so automatically we start solving the problem.

That's how you get surprises, because what movies are all about is surprises.