I know a lot of people who have weird specialties that are not taught in schools; they're things that you learn in life.

Shining in the midnight moonlight, while the King sings love me tender.

. . . I wrote a letter to Thomas Pynchon asking, Can I have your permission to try to make an [adaptation] of your book? And I had no idea that he would answer me, because he's pretty elusive. But he did send a letter back that said, Yes, you can do that - as long as the only instrument in the opera is a banjo. I thought, That's an interesting way of saying No.

People only stutter at the beginning of the word. They're not afraid when they get to the end of the word. There's just regret.

I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.

We want to dedicate our music tonight to the great opportunity that we all have to begin to truly understand the events of the past few days and to act upon them with courage and with compassion as we make our plans to live in a completely new world.

I realized why movie scores are mostly strings, because it really frees your eyes to look around.