This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

This must be the mission of every man of goodwill: to insist, unflaggingly, at risk of becoming a repetitive bore, but to insist on the achievement of a world in which the mind will have triumphed over violence.

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

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

I can't live one day without hearing music, playing it , studying it , or thinking about it .

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.

To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both.