One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife

If idioms are more to be born than to be selected, then the things of life and human nature that a man has grown up with--(not that one man's experience is better than another's, but that it is 'his.')--may give him something better in his substance and manner than an over-long period of superimposed idiomatic education which quite likely doesn't fit his constitution. My father used to say, 'If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven'

Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us, and for that reason we are inclined to call them beautiful. Frequently, when a new or unfamiliar work is accepted as beautiful on its first hearing, its fundamental quality is one that tends to put the mind to sleep.

If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?

You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.

Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?

It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.