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

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 got asked to do loads of TV series, all sorts of things that weren't me.

That's the really neat thing about Dan Quayle, as you must have realized from the first moment you looked into those lovely blue eyes: impeachment insurance.

His father is governor of Media, and though he has the greatest command given him of all the rest of my generals, he still covetously desires more, and my being without issue spurs him on to this wicked design. But Philotas takes wrong measures.

Mythology is a vast body of knowledge that has not been tapped.

As an engineer you learn there is a solution to every problem. It may take you a while but eventually youre going to find it.

There is an enormous shadow industry of scammers and amateurs who prey on aspiring writers, who divert people from the real publishing industry into this shadow world of vanity publishing and fee-charging agents.

To express to you in mere words, our personal feelings on this occasion you must know to be impossible, and particularly so for one who normally has to describe only things outside himself.

Typical news accounts and commentaries about school shootings and rampage killings rarely mention gender.

Success in life is not for those who run fast, but for those who keep running and always on the move.

When I first started in the business, I spent so much! Staying in a Trump Hotel for two years, spending eight Gs a month just living.

If you're going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

You don't want to be starting a film not knowing what you want to do.

I was 12 in '55 when rock and roll hit. It just completely transformed me.

Love is the last relay and ultimate outposts of eternity.

They ought to put an amendment to the First Amendment that says there shall also be freedom of hearing.

Avoiding the temptation to sin and being patient upon that, is greater than being patient whilst being afflicted with trials.

Every parent in America has the total power to control all television programming that is dispatched to their home today.

Our emotions are often beautiful, but they can also be dangerous. They represent our spontaneity, and seem to speak to us of our freedom.

Wisdom is oftentimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.

The death of a baby is like a stone cast into the stillness of a quiet pool; the concentric ripples of despair sweep out in all directions, affecting many, many people.

What you withhold in this life will be withheld from you in the next.

I've had some really, really wild fun nights in Vegas. I ended up on stage once with this band, The Digital Underground, doing the Humpty Dance.

My goal is to be living back in Canada as soon as I can, hopefully somewhere in the Gulf Islands.

Every economy is uncertain. Referring to this or any economy as 'uncertain' is an unnecessary and pessimistic redundancy.