I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

For the past ten years I have had no financial problems.

Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.

I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.

New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock.

But if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris.

But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people.

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.

I like to stay home and listen to recordings.

First of all I listen to music. I like music.

I write bars, for the musicians, because they have to be together.

In my piano concerto I developed this polyphony to much higher complexity.

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music.

I listen to all kinds of music - new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.

My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist - a painter, a decorative painter.

There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry.

If you come from Paris to Budapest you think you are in Moscow.

Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully.

Steinberg is great. I should like to meet him.

I don't use old music.

People often thought Leopold Auer was Russian because he lived in St. Petersburg so long, almost fifty years.

Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.

Gesualdo was very important to me, I wanted to do something which corresponded to him.

Perhaps the better word is emotional yes, I am an emotional man.

I don't read such boring things. Life is too short.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee.

Lack of courtesy is an extreme form of disrespect.

The vision, determination, stamina, hope, relentlessness, and sheer work that are involved in staying afloat, much less succeeding, are the same whether you are running a window on 47th Street or Miramax Films or Microsoft.

Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur.

We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's greatest healers.

The ideal beauty is a fugitive which is never found.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless to understand only when nothing can be undone.

Goals provide the energy source that powers our lives. One of the best ways we can get the most from the energy we have is to focus it. That is what goals can do for us; concentrate our energy.

I came out of my mum's stomach going, 'I want to be an actor!'

Chris is the engineer down at the studio where we do these things. And he's just such an integral part and he has such a marvelous ear. Also it turns out, we didn't know, but he's a pretty good fiddle player.

I delight not in spreading any thing mysterious, for I consider it all lost time; but the things that all of us can see and know if we will.

As I get older, people do come up to me just to give me a hug.

I'm a 7 o'clock act. My people want to go to a show, a dinner and then go home and go to bed.

I don't stay in my trailer. I like to sit in video village, probably to the annoyance of some producers and directors, because they really love to talk about actors, and they can't in front of me.

As soon as you get over caring what people think you can have a nice time

There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.

Respecting our veterans includes providing them the ways and means they so desperately need to reintegrate into our lives and serve us again as productive members of our civilian community.

The key to making money in angel investing is saying no. You meet with 100 companies and say no to 99 of them.

Man, I just feel so fortunate to be a jazz musician at all. I have a hard time thinking of it any other way. It's such a fulfilling vocation. I love it.

Who would know but ten years ago that kids would be texting each other all the time, that that would be one of their main forms of communication. And so many times, these kids know more about the technology than their parents. And so many times, we're putting kids in very adult situations and expecting them to behave like they're 40 years old.

One theme I ran into over and over while writing about the periodic table was the future of energy and the question of which element or elements will replace carbon as king.

Astrology: do we make a hullabaloo among the stars, or do they make a hullabaloo down here?