You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. It doesn't matter what. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining.

When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm

It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion.

I have two answers to everything and one answer to nothing.