I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.

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

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.

Life without music is meaningless, music without life is academic.

Wine snobbery, of course, is part showmanship, part sophistication, part knowledge, and part bluff

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

Even experimental composers, revolutionary composers, self-styled radicals are, in writing revolutionary music, recognizing the music that preceded them precisely by trying to avoid it.