You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. It doesn't matter what. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.

Life without music is meaningless, music without life is academic.

In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.

Which of my Jewish roots do I follow?

If you're a good composer, you steal good steals.

Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.

I have two answers to everything and one answer to nothing.