Divine fires do not blaze each day but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence.

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.

Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.

As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military when they should be using that same energy getting rid of the military completely.

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.

If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.