My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.

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.

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.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

I fear for the safety and well-being of our children.

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

One who has passed the thirtieth yearalready is as good as dead--it would be best to kill you off by then.

If we build more windows and fewer walls, we will have more friends.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation. The ground at the foot of the cross is level, and it touches my heart when I see whites standing shoulder to shoulder with blacks at the cross.

Life, it's life we deal with...He that sees the light And knows the light Shall live.

Cynic' is the sentimentalist's name for the realist.

Seventy percent of a first draft is garbage and 30 percent is gold, but you have to write 100 percent to get that 30.

If you can keep learning, you can still do your thing, and keep singing or whatever, and still do innovative things.

When I am stressed, my No. 1 reliever is my music.