Both parents were very encouraging - especially my father. My father thought the sun rose and set with me. Neither one had a musical background or any musical talent. They liked classical music, but neither could carry a tune.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

I'm a terrible singer, but it helps when I have to call a taxi.

I don't think events in your life affect your music.

My music is all about an idealistic human personality. I have 19th-century ideals.

If you have more money than you need, you have to give it away. It's a duty. I get to choose whom to sponsor, and I like to give to the areas that I know something about.

I want to make the world better.

Nicolette, Kendalle, and Alexandra are my children. Their mother, Cynthia Beck, and I, love them very much.

I see only adaptations - not revolutions.

My father was so much more than an accomplished businessman.

Both parents were very encouraging - especially my father. My father thought the sun rose and set with me. Neither one had a musical background or any musical talent. They liked classical music, but neither could carry a tune.

I do not think that music keeps evolving. It evolved through Bach; since then, in my humble opinion, all the innovations added nothing.

I've had every advantage in the world, despite the 18 years of silence which were nobody's fault but mine.

I've managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me - music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. It's all about ideas.

The Getty family has been fully supportive throughout this situation, and for that, I am very grateful.

It's true that I tend to daydream. I'm the same person in business as I am in music: I can be distracted and absentminded. It's my style.

Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not.

When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989, my first piano teacher sent me something that I'd composed when I was four. I remember I played it, and it still sounded like me. I'm the same composer I was then.

I personally do not write highbrow music. If I do, it's by accident.

I feel that I belong to the 19th century. Some composers' music is very topical. It almost says, 'This is about what I read in newspapers yesterday.' Not mine.

There is no change - I'm as deep or as shallow as I ever was. What's new is on-the-job experience. This is what you gain with years.

I just have to take my chances like any other composer.

I remember him watching me through the crack of a door singing with a hairbrush. I was in front of his mirror. I think he wanted me to sing. He would get me on the table and make me sing sometimes or play the piano. He was very encouraging on that front.

I'm really happy that I got to work with such fresh talent. In a day when record companies are not particularly good at encouraging young, talented songwriters to come forward and get exposure, I think it's important to give tomorrow's songwriters the opportunity.

The failure of Socialism since 1945 is that whilst encouraging us all, the creators of wealth, to produce less through strikes, it has caused us all to demand a higher level of our own product.

There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die.

One is, that they will feel about you that you're going to make something wonderful for them. And they help you by expressing themselves. Not telling you how to do it, but encouraging you and accepting your vision and working with you on that kind of a level.

In many ways I wish I wasn't an actor dragging around the baggage from being one so that I could just devote my energies to encouraging people to find their true selves.

Writing is no dying art form in America because most published writers here accept the wisdom and the necessity of encouraging the talent that follows in their footsteps.

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

Encouraging underground uranium mining on the Colorado Plateau um, the federal government was the only purchaser of uranium ore to try to manufacture uh, atomic bombs.

Lying under oath, and encouraging lies under oath, does go to the very heart and soul of what courts do. If we say we don't care, let's forget about courts, and we'll just have other ways of figuring out how to handle disputes.

I want to do all types of music, music for all people. I want my music to be encouraging, to help people.

Yeah I do and I don't mind, in fact that is one of the real encouraging things about this whole career of mine is that there are tunes I wrote almost thirty years ago that I will still play in front of an audience and I still like the old tunes.

You are your greatest asset. Put your time, effort and money into training, grooming, and encouraging your greatest asset.

Initial reports are encouraging. In the end of the day, it's going to be deeds, not words, that matter.

I was very sad to hear of the death of Ronnie Barker, who was such a warm, friendly and encouraging presence to have when I started in television. He was also a great comic actor to learn from.

And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.

The most important and urgent appeal we have to make is for an immediate cease-fire. Initial reports from the cease-fire talks being held in N'Djamena in Chad are not very encouraging.

Ah, Hope! what would life be, stripped of thy encouraging smiles, that teach us to look behind the dark clouds of today, for the golden beams that are to gild the morrow.

By encouraging its citizens to violate our border, Mexico is pushing a tremendous welfare burden off of its shoulders and onto ours, while also benefiting from the significant sums of U.S. currency that these workers will eventually send back home to their families.

The American taxpayer should not be treated more shabbily than debtors from other nations and we should be encouraging other nations to help rebuild Iraq's economy.

So I'm going to go on and work on preserving the ozone layer, encouraging everyone to recycle.

Greater public recognition will also be critical in encouraging prevention and early intervention, and more generally in building public support to meet the challenges of dementia.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

I mean, I'm new but I've always been very interested in film making process and I've been lucky enough to work with film makers in my past that have been very encouraging to let me hang around. I get so emotionally vested - that the producer part of me was natural.

This is my first visit to Africa, a region where President Bush has voiced a deep passion for fostering and encouraging economic development, investment and trade.

Encouraging people to believe in it was the most important thing of all. It's one of the reasons I was always uncomfortable whenever film crews came on the set to shoot things. I didn't want our make-believe to be exposed.

I'd like to do a television show that is encouraging, useful, and clean, and I'd like to go up against Entertainment Tonight and beat it.