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

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of

Compose first, worry later.

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

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest . . . she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.

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

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.