For an actor you're rejected eight or ten times a day. All you've got to sell is yourself. You're not selling products they're not turning down a car they're turning you down. Most people can't handle that. Most people are essentially not set up that way.

If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years which rejected it.

What is sacred among one people may be ridiculous in another and what is despised or rejected by one cultural group may in a different environment become the cornerstone for a great edifice of strange grandeur and beauty.

It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.