Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has to the book I am reading

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.