Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

I can't live one day without hearing music, playing it , studying it , or thinking about it .

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.

It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.

I hate you, Richard Wagner . . . but I hate you on my knees.

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

I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.