Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people - they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

Don't be shy, dear. I'm too old for you to be embarrassed by me.

Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic...

We are not obliged to like everyone, only to love and forgive everyone, sometimes from a distance.

Jack might look my age, but he was like a little kid on a sugar high --- in need of a good spanking. --- Good heavens, that sounded creepy.

I remember early on, in my very, very early days, I had a makeup artist tell me that I needed to get an attitude. I had no idea what he was talking about.

But my apology was a thousand apologies.

The hours pass and the days and the months and the years, and the past time never returns.

I'm not one of those people who's saying "I'm going to set up a production company", because I like acting and not having to be a business man and do that side of things.

Each nation has a main current in life; in India it is religion. Make it strong and the waters on either side must move along with it.

You know you're getting older when they're making TV shows, sequels or plays for things that you did. It's very flattering and very humbling, indeed.