With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind and heart of the composer.

The only reason I am successful is because I have stayed true to myself.

A deaf composer's like a cook who's lost his sense of taste. A frog that's lost its webbed feet. A truck driver with his license revoked. That would throw anybody for a loop, don't you think? But Beethoven didn't let it get to him. Sure, he must have been a little depressed at first, but he didn't let misfortune get him down. It was like, Problem? What problem? He composed more than ever and came up with better music than anything he'd ever written. I really admire the guy. Like this Archduke Trio--he was nearly deaf when he wrote it, can you believe it? What I'm trying to say is, it must be tough on you not being able to read, but it's not the end of the world. You might not be able to read, but there are things only you can do. That's what you gotta focus on--your strengths. Like being able to talk with the stone.

Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.

Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure; I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.

If you don't believe in God, you can suspend it while listening to Bach, and then go back to being an atheist.

Puccini - silver macaroni, exquisitely tangled.

Grieg's music has the odd and pleasant taste of a pink sweet filled with snow.

Would you have your songs endure? Build on the human heart.

My music is purposeless play. It is an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living.

I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.

Every composer's music reflects in its subject-matter and in its style the source of the money the composer is living on while writing the music.

I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying not to think about.

I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.

Music is only understood when one goes away singing it and only loved when one falls asleep with it in one's head, and finds it still there on waking up the next morning.

In order to compose, all you need do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

When I play Beethoven I always feel as if my soul were at the dry-cleaners.