As long as I'm healthy and can keep going that's what I'll do.

And it is this sense that some of us have to contribute to the culture, to the society in ways that may hurt financially, so what? We do it because we are born to do it, we feel we have no other choice and so be it.

I would like to read some books: I don't have time; I would like to continue working on my autobiography.

So now, thirty years, forty years later, I mean, I could find a whole orchestra of a thousand to put these things together in New York City alone. In those days, if I could scrape up twenty musicians to do this it was something extraordinary.

But somehow, I felt no inclination to be interested in it in any amateur way, let alone professional, until suddenly I became interested. And the first thing I did was to compose: not play an instrument, but to compose.

As long as I'm healthy and can keep going that's what I'll do.

The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded performances; to give young musicians their first debut on a recording. These are all things that big record companies would never touch because there is no money in it!

After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.

I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?

Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations.

That was more or less coincidental in the sense that my parents wanted me to come back to New York because that's the center of musical activity still to this day, more or less, and so I auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera.

You know, I'm not gonna take my money with me to heaven or hell, wherever I'm going. So I want to do something good with it even though my means are very limited. I'm no millionaire!

As rich as Cincinnati was in live music, New York was even more.

So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past building something new: that is what is important.

Well, because music is my life and music is not work for me.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

And I'm hoping that fair-minded people will stand up and say that what's been done to me is wrong, and that-that people's personal lives have no impact on their ability to be a journalist, you know. Why should my past prevent me from having a future?

I think quite a lot of people have a friendship or a love that's gone like that and it never quite reconciles properly.

I was very lucky in that my parents were very broad-minded. Because they had come from another country and hadn't been able to fulfill their dreams, they wanted me to be more of myself, if you know what I mean.

Everybody says 'Good Morning' in Harlem because it's true! And that's lovely.

You know, when you're an actor, you want to go to Hollywood. When you're a musician, you want to go to Nashville.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.

Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women - 91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data - is practically absurd and morally indefensible.

My brother, whom I adored, typed out a children's book illustrated by himself... at the age of 14. My sister, with whom I always shared a double bed, had that effortless superiority of someone six years older and anxious to show it. But we were each as shy as voles. It seemed safer to keep to each other's company.

Charter hired me - which, to be honest, took some humility on its part, since I have helped lead public campaigns against cable companies like Charter - to advise it in crafting its commitment to network neutrality.

The only thing I've settled in my mind is that I want to forgive, and forgiveness comes with forgetting.

I'm never, like I say, I'm never happy, I'm never satisfied, it's never good enough.

We don't choose the books we write; they choose us.

Everything I experience influences everything I do.

I'm actually a very honest person, and sometimes I end up like, 'Man, I said too much.' It's hard for me not to tell the truth when you ask me.

Love is a hole in the heart.

I hope people will say, 'Mr. Valentino, he did something for fashion, no?'

I'm fairly certain when I die that the obituary will say, 'Author of 'Angels in America' dies.' Unless I'm completely forgotten, and then it won't say anything at all.

I still miss my parents every day; I adored them. And when you have no children, friends are even more important to you.

Treat marriage like a diamond necklace; if broken, fix it, but do not throw it away.

Rowing is the name of the game, but it's not a game, so pull your ass off until you cross the finish line.

Everyone has a side to them that's kind of unexplained and feels misunderstood.

Acting had been a hobby that turned into a career, the directing was a hobby that turned into a career, and music just really allowed me to find another way to express myself. I started playing bass in November 1996, and by June 1998 I was doing my first live show.

The winter's a little bit daunting in Montana.