I had found English audiences highly satisfactory. They are the best listeners in the world. Perhaps the music-lovers of some of our larger cities equal the English, but I do not believe they can be surpassed in that respect.

Composers are the only people who can hear good music above bad sounds.

The average music-lover hears only the production under prevailing conditions.

Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher than himself.

The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

I can almost always write music; at any hour of the twenty-four, if I put pencil to paper, music comes.

Jazz will endure just as long people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.