I am fortunate to have worked with him and to have known him for so many years, and with no hesitation, I can say that there is absolutely no one with that passion for music and of course, films. He is an encyclopaedia of Indian music. So when we are in the studio, I just follow him like a student. He is as brilliant a composer as he is a director-producer.

These facts make the creator of music a being like the gods, and make music itself the supreme mystery of human knowledge.

I figured he'd be like a genius, because he is. He’s very, very subtle and nuanced. It’s very much in the eyes. That’s how it is in real life. He’s such a great actor. I was just amazed that I got the chance to work with him.

He is the most loving father, the most brilliant actor, the most beautiful operatic tenor, the most talented visual artist- the wisest and most human advice giver.

He is a truly complex fellow, not unlike the Michelangelos and da Vincis of the Renaissance period. He's a supreme artist but he is constantly filled with doubts and self-anger about his work--and that is what makes him so good. He is a perfectionist who is never sure he is attaining perfection.

He's a highly talented guy. He does very good movies and he's not the sort of person who always talks bullshit. He does many, many things right. But he's also sick. Obsessed. He wants to make history, not movies. Anyone who wants to make history is stupid.

"Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!"

"[On the virtuous man] "He combines the highest, lowest and middle chords in complete harmony within himself.

My father was a walking encyclopedia, and he flipped his pages with the zeal and precision of a magician.

A man bringing himself, melody and mathematics into perfect and enviable proportions. / only more so, much more so.

On music: "Scientifically, believe it or not, music drives everything, because music equals universe and universe equals music".

His appearance gives no clue to what his profession might be, and yet he doesn't look like a man without a profession either. Consider what he's like: He always knows what to do. He knows how to gaze into a woman's eyes. He can put his mind to any question at any time. He can box. He is gifted, strong-willed, open-minded, fearless, tenacious, dashing, circumspect — why quibble, suppose we grant him all those qualities — yet he has none of them! They have made him what he is, they have set his course for him, and yet they don't belong to him. When he is angry, something in him laughs. When he is sad, he is up to something. When something moves him, he turns against it. He'll always see a good side to every bad action. What he thinks of anything will always depend on some possible context — nothing is, to him, what it is: everything is subject to change, in flux, part of a whole, of an infinite number of wholes presumably adding up to a super-whole that, however, he knows nothing about. So every answer he gives is only a partial answer, every feeling an opinion, and he never cares what something is, only 'how' it is — some extraneous seasoning that somehow goes along with it, that's what interests him.

“It always seemed to me they’re sort of alike,” he said, “magic and music. Spells and tunes. For one thing, you have to get them just exactly right.”

At his best, things do not happen to the artist; he happens to them.