Nothing can be more limiting to the imagination than only writing about what you know
In theory it may seem all right to some, but when it comes to being made the instrument of the Lord's vengeance, I myself don't like it.
In these days of political, personal and economic disintegration, music is not a luxury, it's a necessity; not simply because it is therapeutic, nor because it is the universal language, but because it is the persistent focus of our intelligence, aspiration and goodwill.
The arts are not simply skills: their concern is the intellectual, ethical, and spiritual maturity of human life. And in a time when religious and political institutions are so busy engraving images of marketable gods and candidates that they lose their vision of human dignity, the arts have become the custodians of those values which most worthily difine humanity, which most sensitively define Divinity.
You never know who's going to be in the audience. You never know who is going to be hearing that piece for the first time, and you never know who is going to be hearing that piece for the last time.
When we all sing with one voice, the world will stop and listen.
Success lasts only three seconds. After that, you're the same as you were before you had it.
My impact on the game was going out there and making things happen.
The mission - the overall mission is to dismantle and defeat and disrupt al-Qaeda. But we have to make sure there's not a safe haven that returns in Afghanistan.
Must one rash word, the infirmity of age, throw down the merit of my better years?
I had long periods where I couldn't make things happen, and then periods of enormous good luck. I guess the trick is to keep going in the periods when you're not lucky, when your stars are not aligned.