Maybe I'm old-fashioned. But I remember the beauty and thrill of being moved by Broadway musicals - particularly the endings of shows.

I'm not one of those people who says, 'I never read reviews,' because I don't believe those people.

I have always thought of music as a highway with many lanes.

I still have great faith in what is good and right in all of us.

I was always drawn to Broadway musicals, and obviously composers like Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin and Porter were writing music that I found wildly impressive.

My whole thing is not just to play music for people, but to make them part of the evening.

There have been studies that clearly state that children who are exposed to arts education at a young age will in fact do markedly better in their SAT tests

You mustn't underestimate an audience's intelligence.

The biggest thrill you can have is to tell people one of your songs, and have them be able to hum it.

From the time I could play the piano, I remember trying to write tunes. They were in my head, and I would just sit down and start noodling. Next thing I knew, I had written a melody.

My show business career doesn't mean I can't write a symphony. It just means I was never asked to write one.

Hope is the passion to receive your heart’s desires.

Say all the bad things you can imagine so they won't happen.

I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is the affection. Even though you're poking fun at someone or something, there's still an affection for it.

There's always a learning curve, where you've got to learn what your subject is all about.

Unscrupulous agitators have been at work spreading atrocity stories which can only be compared with those lies that were fabricated by the same instigators at the beginning of the Great War.

Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.

Some of us, for better or worse, develop very stable, consistent, and largely predictable machineries of self. But in others, the self machinery is more flexible and more open to unexpected turns.

I have some security that could protect me against provocations but of course there are more terrible actions that could not be stopped by any security.

If you honestly believe that," said Thorne, stowing the gun again, "then you really don't recognize true value when you see it.

But foremost, I do not subscribe to the view that Islamic culture and democracy cannot be reconciled.