When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors.

Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.

My parents got divorced and military school gave me a structure. A lot of kids my age were children of divorced parents. They didn't know what to do with the kids.

I don't like the word 'career'. When somebody says to me, 'oh, you've had such a wonderful career', I think, 'career - that's after you're dead.' I just don't think that way.

When I listen to my work, I think, what's so inflammatory about it? It's not really that dissonant. A lot of people who used to hate my stuff have come round to it.

In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.

They wanted me to be a concert pianist, because I had a very good right hand, but my left hand's terrible and I hated performing.