I shall always respect the composer. If I embellish it is his idea I am embellishing.

With Hitchcock I had little relationship. I was called to replace Bernard Herrmann his favorite composer in Torn Curtain after the bitter fight between them.

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

The snow itself is lonely or if you prefer self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.

My husband is a composer so he plays piano all the time and I sit there and clap telling my unborn child 'Hear me clap hear the music.' I know music in general is supposed to be good for babies to hear.

I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself in a sense in the mid 1960s really when I first heard composers like Terry Riley and when I first started playing with tape recorders.

Life is like music it must be composed by ear feeling and instinct not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases though not often.

Life is like music it must be composed by ear feeling and instinct not by rule.

Composers shouldn't think too much - it interferes with their plagiarism.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.