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

I think it is time we learned the lesson of our century: that the progress of the human spirit must keep pace with technological and scientific progress, or that spirit will die. It is incumbent on our educators to remember this; and music is at the top of the spiritual must list. When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost. But as long as we insist on maintaining artistic vitality, we are able to hope in man

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune.

I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.

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