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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Maybe it’s true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.

The Spurs couldn’t put everything aside and just play the damn game.

I’m obviously not going to give you everything about my whole life, but as far as my personality, you see me all the time from watching the games.

Everything is so chaotic and messy in the world, and I have always felt kind of dirty.

I want to be here for a long time, so I am going to do everything I have to do to be here. And I want to walk my daughter down the aisle and give her away to somebody some day.

Basketball was always a game to me. One of the greatest things in life for me was to be able to play what I loved dearly and get paid for it. So it was always a game to me and that’s how I perceived everything.

Everything that I will ever accomplish, I owe to God, to my parent’s sacrifices, and to the United States of America.

I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever.