I wanted to be a composer before anything else. And my sister was listening to Led Zeppelin in the other room! When I heard that, it was a game-changer.
Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to.
I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.
Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.
My favorite dish is bibimbap, which is composed of various vegetables, steamed and pickled, and meat toppings over a bed of rice.
Americans can pretty much sing anything, whereas foreign singers are often limited in style, language, even composer.
You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.
I don't always write in order, so composing multi-book stories could get complicated.
If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void.
I recently did a piece for the Boston Pops and John Williams, and I hope that it's as well a composed piece as I've ever done for any other medium or occasion.
Although Freud said happiness is composed of love and work, reality often forces us to choose love or work.
When you have great songs that are going to live longer than the composers, everything you can do to bring those different elements and nuances out, serve the song.
I loved Hendrix. I mean, really, really loved him. As if he were one of the great classical composers. And he was. That's how I saw him.
Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge, for it requires from its disciples, composers and performers alike, not only talent and enthusiasm, but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.
In a crazy way, writing is a lot like any kind of very complex game - like chess, where you have the knowledge as you're composing all of the ramifications of each move, of each choice you make.
I've been composing music all my life and if I'd been clever enough at school I would like to have gone to music college.
There are particular images that I like. Allegro is composed of a series of still life photographs that has been put to speed. There is so much care that has gone into the composition of the cinematography.
That is basically me, and although I have done many things in my life - conducting, playing piano, and so on - what is fundamental is my being a composer.
I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.
Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.
The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.
