What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul.

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

Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it.

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.

In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.

What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul.

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.