Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.

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.

I am a fool for Christ...whose fool are you?

Fortunately for serious minds a bias recognized is a bias sterilized.

I hate flying. Know why? Because no one really understands how planes actually work.

A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world.

The truth is, you know, we need our anodynes. You know that word, anodynes? We need that in life some times. A good warm bath can be one for you, or a whatever.

WHANGDEPOOTENAWAH, n. In the Ojibwa tongue, disaster; an unexpected affliction that strikes hard.

The best thing about becoming successful is that you get flowers all the time.

I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must. Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.

Only in intimate communion with solitude may man find himself. Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.

I've been doing som jogging at home recently and every time I try the distance I end up beating his time with like three or four seconds.