"6 AM. The sky glows. Somewhere a bird chirps. I want to shoot it."

“In one week I'll be thirty. Three-zero. Older than my Dad was when I was born. Older than Napoleon was when he ... did something that was probably extremely impressive at the time – I'm not a historian. I'm a composer. Sorry, a "promising young composer." I should have kids of my own by now, a career, but instead I've been "promising" for so long I'm afraid I'm starting to break the fucking promise.”

“Dying in America / At the end of the millennium / We're dying in America / To come into our own / And when you're dying in America / At the end of the millennium / You're not alone”

“I think they meant it when they said you can't buy love, but now I know you can rent it, a new lease you are my love!”

“I'm not mad that you got mad when I got mad when you said I should go drop dead.”

“The opposite of war isn't peace... It's creation!”

“I want to write music. I want to sit down right now at the piano, and write a song that people will listen to and remember. And do the same thing every morning for the rest of my life.”