If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better. I am convinced...that provided the ear be at length made amends, there are few dissonances too strong for it. Disharmony, to paraphrase Bergson's statement about disorder, is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.

People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.

There will always be critics eager to fashion opinions for the lazy and incapable.

My favorite music is the music I haven't yet heard

All I know about method is that when I am not working I sometimes think I know something, but when I am working, it is quite clear I know nothing.

Guy Nearing told us it's a good idea when hunting mushrooms to have a pleasant goal, a waterfall for instance, and, having reached it, to return another way. When, however, we're obliged to go and come back by the same path, returning we notice mushrooms we hadn't noticed going out.