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

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.

The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A deceptive memory may be the key to their originality.

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

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.

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.