Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.

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.

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

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

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.