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

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.

But, after all, we are a young nation, and vanity is a fault of youth.

That's one of our biggest problems, it's always somebody else's fault instead of our own fault.

It's my fault in many cases because I don't initiate the contact to talk with a lot of other musicians.

We don't suggest that because San Francisco lies on top of an earthquake fault that it should be moved.

I think in the wake of Katrina, the Coast Guard may well have been the only entity or agency that came out of that exercise free of fault and free of blame.

Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.

Correct one fault at a time. Concentrate on the one fault you want to overcome.

A woman should say: "Have I made him happy? Is he satisfied? Does he love me more than he loved me before? Is he likely to go to bed with another woman?" If he does, then it's the wife's fault because she is not trying to make him happy.

Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.

The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude.

I think the one thing this picture shows that's new is the psychological disproportion of the kids' demands on the parents. Parents are often at fault, but the kids have some work to do, too.

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.

It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation.

It just broke my heart, and I had to get away from it. I love them to death, but they know how bad it got. It's not their fault, but I couldn't do that any longer.

If you become addicted and a junkie, well, that's your fault.

If I'm in danger then it's usually my fault and it's up to me to get myself out of it. I am not in it just to get an adrenalin rush. No way!

At the same, we need to remain sensitive to the reality that we are still an African society in which the majority of the people and communities live under severe deprivations and afflictions that are no fault of theirs.

Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others.

The base paths belonged to me, the runner. The rules gave me the right. I always went into a bag full speed, feet first. I had sharp spikes on my shoes. If the baseman stood where he had no business to be and got hurt, that was his fault.

One of the surest evidences of friendship that one individual can display to another is telling him gently of a fault. If any other can excel it, it is listening to such a disclosure with gratitude, and amending the error.

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.

It's very difficult to determine whether this is the fault of the world that has abandoned the Church, or the Church that does not know how to relate to the world.

A fault is fostered by concealment.

If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.

In the beginning, everybody that gets to work with me, thinks I'm nice. But three weeks later, they hear a bell ringing. Then they realise I meant everything I said during that first week. It's not my fault people are not taking me serious from the first moment.

Find fault with thyself rather than with others.