“I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like.”

One day I’ll be able to relax a bit, and try and become a good composer.

These two are not two, love has made them one. Amo Ergo Sum! And by its mystery each is no less but more.

Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.

The model of a composer.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.

I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

Composing is like driving down a foggy road.

Music does not excite until it is performed.

It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful.

I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.

Life is ridiculous. It’s not our fault.

The writer’s life: Hard days, lots of work, no money, too much silence. Nobody’s fault. You chose it.

We in the media are just people with all of people’s faults.

Something goes wrong, I yell at them -‘Fix it’- whether it’s their fault or not. You can only really yell at the players you trust.

The people you don’t know turn out to be exactly like the people you do know, same faults, same everything.

It is a fault, not a virtue, to wish your humility recognized and applauded.

Speak no evil, that thou mayest not hear it spoken unto thee, and magnify not the faults of others that thine own faults may not appear great.

You must purge yourself before finding faults in others.