I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.

Art is not only about angst.

The French Revolution is the ultimate modernist statement. Destroy everything. Don't build on the past. There is no past.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make.

I have tremendous respect for film composers.

You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award.

I find respect for a mediocre British composer, as opposed to a really good American, ridiculous because they automatically respect a composer if he's from England.

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.

Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.

I always conceive a piece as a different set of challenges.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Don't let your 'bad pride' prevent you from moving forward on an opportunity that will allow you to showcase your 'good pride'.

'Catcher in the Rye.' I feel like any brooding teen loves that book.

I am known to be able to take care of myself when I become angry. I don't mince words.

As men do walk a mile, women should talk an hour, After supper. 'Tis their exercise.

In the last stages of a final illness, we need only the absence of pain and the presence of family.

Not everyone is there to get an abortion. Your body is like a car that has needs and women's bodies constantly need a level of care that men don't.

Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.

A gladiator's first distraction is his last.

I think it's really important that the people who are going to make decisions for other people have fair, truthful and compassionate regard for all people, not just some people.