I have often read critical pieces where the critic said that what the composer was trying to do didn't come off. I have wondered what the critic meant if he didn't know what the composer was trying to do.

Musicians tell me, if what I'm doing is right, they should never have gone to school.

I don't really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I'd like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness.

Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else.

Even when you write it, someone's got to play it. So if you can play it and bypass all the rest of the things, you're still doing as great as someone that has spent forty years trying to find out how to do that. I'm really pro-human beings, pro-expression of everything.

After I found out that I was playing music and that I'd have to learn how to read and write music, I started doing that about two years later. Finally, I said, "Oh, that means what I really want to do is to be a composer." But when I was coming up in Texas, there was segregation. There was no schools to go to. I taught myself how to read and how to start writing.

Whatever you do, it's over when you do it - but first you have to do it.