I'm never going to be the lead actor guy. I'm real quiet and real happy and real fortunate to keep working. It's what I do. It's like the circus. I ran away and joined it a long time ago.
Let your mind alone, and see what happens.
I said to my friends that if I was going to starve, I might as well starve where the food is good.
Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.
In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise.
I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.
The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.
No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.
I should be a success and I'm not and other people- younger people- are. Younger people than me are on TV and getting their lives in order. I'm still a nobody. When am I going to not be a nobody?
I think kids in Europe have developed a deeper knowledge of music and of black music in particular. You go to Europe, and these kids know about all this obscure funk and soul that kids over here wouldn't know. I think it's getting better in the States, though, with the age of the Internet.
It's time for America to get right.