People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.

I almost went to bed without remembering the four white violets I put in the button-hole of your green sweater and how i kissed you then and you kissed me shy as though I’d never been your lover

I have tried in my way to be free.

I was 15 when I first became deeply touched by the rhythm and structure of words.

It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.

Fare thee well my nightingale, I lived but to be near you. Thow you are singing somewhere still I can no longer hear you.

It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.