Wine snobbery, of course, is part showmanship, part sophistication, part knowledge, and part bluff

To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.

The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle.

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.