Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.

A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?

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

The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized

Every great inspiration is but an experiment - though every experiment we know, is not a great inspiration.

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

Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have -- I want it that way.