These words are razors to my wounded heart.
It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful.
It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.
The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.
Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house.
Music does not excite until it is performed.
I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers.
Every single thing you've been through in your life has had a purpose.
I tell the actors that the biggest gift they can give me is to fail. And that the second gift they can give me is to surprise me.
Last Christmas, I got the worst gift a guy ever gave me. He gave me a lottery ticket. . . what's the guy even thinking there. Here you go. . . nothing! Merry Christmas! It's nothing!
Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.