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.

My musical knowledge is so bad it's embarrassing. When composers discuss music with someone as primitive as myself they have to talk about it in terms of senses and emotion rather than keys and tempo.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

For it is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study.

Of all the species of literary composition perhaps biography is the most delightful. The attention concentrated on one individual gives a unity to the materials of which it is composed which is wanting in general history.

Although Freud said happiness is composed of love and work reality often forces us to choose love or work.

Happiness is composed of misfortunes avoided.

The U.S. will ignore the opinion of the Iraqi people and it will compose the new government according to its own desires.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

If human beings are fundamentally good no government is necessary if they are fundamentally bad any government being composed of human beings would be bad also.

A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken only with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness.

The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past the present and the future that we bear within us whoever possesses but one of these terms has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.

Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

Writing is a form of therapy sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write compose or paint can manage to escape the madness melancholia the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes or fisherman's octopus and shrimps fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.

You'll know if you're a famous composer if 20 years from now your name appears on a pull-down menu in Band in a Box alongside Hans Zimmer.

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men women an occasional animal and the common cold.

I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment... rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart such as I have felt it since my childhood.

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces which represent 30% of our musical experience.

Common sense is the measure of the possible it is composed of experience and prevision it is calculation applied to life.

I began my career with infantile dreams of becoming a composer.

I think there's a time as a writer when you want to see the best things in life and you go out wherever you go with your dreams as a writer or a composer.