There is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one's identity by falling in love.

It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts.

Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique.

Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.

It is the element I miss in electronic music - no performance, no loving immersion. Maybe that is why I was never particularly drawn to electronic music.

Great music does not just make me feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed, in other words: how the artist made it his own.

Any creator owes a debt to past creation.

The fact that Stravinsky used the classics as a major influence is obvious. What is interesting is how he used them, how he turned Bach into Stravinsky.

I don't dare postulate about science, but I know that it takes both emotion and intellect in order for art to happen.

My first world is humanity. My second world is humanism. And, I live in the third world being merely a human.

It is a great shock at the age of 5 or 6 to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Music comes from a place we don't know.

I firmly believe that the mission of religion in the 21st century must be to contribute concretely to the peaceful coexistence of humankind.

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.

All MBA have said are correct, but they can't execute it.

I have to say that I think that Anthony Eden was probably the most disastrous Prime Minister in our history, and I am not forgetting Lord North and a few people like that.

I'm not a proselytizer. I was raised Catholic. I am a Catholic.

A tired exclamation mark is a question mark.

Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.