When I play Beethoven I always feel as if my soul were at the dry-cleaners.

In order to compose, all you need do is remember a tune that no one else has thought of.

Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

Music is only understood when one goes away singing it and only loved when one falls asleep with it in one's head, and finds it still there on waking up the next morning.

I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.

I write songs about things that I'm simultaneously trying not to think about.

Every composer's music reflects in its subject-matter and in its style the source of the money the composer is living on while writing the music.

I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.

My music is purposeless play. It is an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living.

Would you have your songs endure? Build on the human heart.