By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There's no specific line, as you know.

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

Now, there are sometimes making a connection between one section and another that sometimes you do want to see the pattern because it helps you to lead into the next thing - it's a rhetorical thing, where you just see how the pattern has to go into the next thing.

The danger of that - and there's a grave danger that I, myself, have to be very aware of - is that you become so involved and intrigued in the language that sometimes you lose track that that is only a means to an aesthetic experience that the listener has to get.

Today, with a recording, he can hear the thing enough times until he really gets acquainted with the language, and then he can begin to make an estimate of the intrinsic, aesthetic value of that piece of music.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people - they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide.

I'm really interested in writing a piece of music that will move you, that will really move you. That is really the only reason that I'm writing music.

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

You write it down because finally, when it's written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

We can use techniques in modifying things, in controlling things, but the first impulse has to be something that you simply cannot make just out of technique, or else it becomes perfectly evident that it is nothing but technique that you're exercising.

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

Because essentially Schoenberg was an extremely gifted man. And in spite of many of his theories and so on, when he really began to write music, he still was guided very much by his internal hearing, by what we call your internal ear.

No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think it's that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music.

By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There's no specific line, as you know.

When I was speaking about communicating, I meant that the listener - we have to reach the listener; otherwise, of course, you're writing the piece, as I say, only for the satisfaction of seeing it on the paper for yourself, and then it ends right there.

In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor.

Well, no. I believe that it's not at all impossible that some of the performances that I've heard so far by some pianists may be superior to my own playing because those are two totally different acts altogether.

Besides merely some pleasure that we get out of the combinations of pitches together and lines, I think that there is some satisfaction that we get in the fact of having this diffuse thing organized very concretely and put onto a frame and have it actually decided.

Now, what we are not talking about, what you're really coming to, is what compromises one makes so that the listener understands somewhat of what you're doing, what you're trying to express.

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

There are some people, by the way, that associate a certain amount of visualization with the performance of music. Those are people that really are not centrally concerned only with music, the traditional things.

I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very complicated, there's really a push to the world to try to figure out what it was that he was hearing.

It doesnt necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

Each day brings opportunity for decisions for eternity.

I'm as pure as the driven slush.

The great people I've met always have time for the niceties.

It's hard to look inside a person to answer a question about why anybody wants to be president. I suppose a combination of ambition, ego, and a real feeling that he could make a difference and could accomplish some things. All you ever had to do for Jimmy Carter was to tell him something was impossible, and he would usually do it.

Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.

The real Representative McDermott said Jason McDermott is no relation. The Congressman does have a son, but his name is James and he does not live in the Midwest.

I see the Ricky Martin thing, and everything is like, just packaged for this moment. Where are they going to be 10 years, 20 years from now?

When I was living in Paris in the '80s, I used to go out with an American model who couldn't speak French. But suddenly everyone could speak English because he was so cute.

I'm having to learn to get the balance right, because if you want a full-time career, and you also want to be a mother who is there for your child, then you have to make sure that when you do spend time together, you're really there for them.

When I signed the license, I thought the media wasn't going to pick up on it if I used my real name, Nicholai Hilton.

Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.

Richie Rich, Keoki, Amanda LaPore are really successful. They've joined the culture at large.

David Moyes was one who, at a certain crossroads in my career, he was there. And since then, I've kicked on. That's why he played such a big role in my career.

We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.

On the Native American front, we have turned a new page in the 400-year history of the interface between the American settlers of this country and the nation's first Americans. That's included a new relationship where the sovereignty of tribes is in fact recognized.

Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.

I came into a strong organization, and I hope I strengthened it more and expanded its capacity to deal with some of the challenges that might not have seemed as great 10 years ago, such as H.I.V., AIDS and children affected by war.

I don't much like to look back with the idea that I was doing it wrong then or I'm doing it wrong now.