"After a few minutes, it was time for me to leave. I don't know who decides these things. It just happens."

“Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.”

Source : "The Gospel According To John Corigliano". Interview with Frank J. Oteri, www.newmusicbox.org. February 1, 2005.

“There are always more smart people outside your company than within it.”

Source : An e-mail to John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, September 28, 2004.

“If you wish to remove avarice you must remove its mother, luxuries. [Lat., Avaritiam si tollere vultis, mater ejus est tollenda, luxuries.]”

“I think it shows that you are a confident person if you can walk up to a group of girls and just be able to talk to them sober.”

“As you can imagine I'm disappointed as anything that I was not selected to be the presidential running mate. And I find it continually appalling that it would be a radical thing to have a woman on the ticket.”

“Hope, deceitful as it is, carries us through life agreeably enough.”

“Someone said to me today, ‘Everybody loved PUSING DAISIES,’ I said, ‘No, they didn’t— that’s why I’m here today talking about a new show.’”

“The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.”