I'm really interested in writing a piece of music that will move you, that will really move you. That is really the only reason that I'm writing music.

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people - they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

Buruma is wise to recommend a balance of concessions and coordination in order to avoid war.

It's impossible to be a good writer if you haven't lived badly. A past life of drinking heavily, fighting and whoring all help to ease those words onto the page.

There are not many original shapes or silhouettes -- only a million variations.

Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness.

Love is the special feeling that brightens all our days, And the secret to its meaning is found in simple ways.

Conor was no longer invisible. They all saw him now. But he was further away than ever.

Since ancient times, philosophers have maintained that to strive too hard for one's own happiness is self-defeating.

Extend your mercy towards others, so that there can be no one in need whom you meet without helping. For what hope is there for us if God should withdraw His Mercy from us?

One lives everything down in time.

One of the things forgotten about the human spirit is that while it is, in the right conditions, noble and brave and wonderful, it is also, when you get right down to it, only human.