You can't possibly predict what will last or not. But once you attempt to write for the ages, you're doomed.

What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.

Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations.

Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.

I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater.

I was trying to do something that seemed very natural and easy but which bridged that gulf between the singing voice and the speaking voice.

I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.