If you read reviews of concerts, the word 'creative' comes up all the time. However, performers playing music usually aren't creative. Critics might say they are, but they're just playing another persons work. They didn't create it.

It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

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

Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.

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.

If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.