Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.

In some century to come, when the school children will whistle popular tunes in quarter-tones--when the diatonic scale will be as obsolete as the pentatonic is now--perhaps then these borderland experiences may be both easily expressed and readily recognized. But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense

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

All melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating keynote of nature and spirit is sounded-the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat, which make the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood and the sap of the trees.

For the man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of sense trivial and to count them nothing considerd with his devotion to his art.

In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind.

But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.