The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

Someone once asked me... whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: "Every day!"

The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

The inspired moment may sometimes be described as a kind of hallucinatory state of mind: one half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates. The half that listens has better look the other way, had better simulate a half attention only, for the half that dictates is easily disgruntled and avenges itself for too close inspection by fading entirely away.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.