After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.

If we could ever find that moment, maybe thousands of years from now, where all the musics of the worlds would be communicating with each other, there would be no more wars, there would be peace.

As rich as Cincinnati was in live music, New York was even more.

So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past building something new: that is what is important.

If you mess around with jazz, you better have a good drummer and a good bass player.

Many people think of me as a modernist, as a radical in music, you know, someone who's always sort of at the avant-garde of musics, but I'm also quite a traditionalist.

Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?

I was playing in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as principal horn. I was there for some 15 years - one of the most exciting and great musical periods in my life.

My primary calling, I always knew since the age of 11, was as a composer, and so that had to take priority.

As long as I'm healthy and can keep going that's what I'll do.

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power.

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires great strength to decide on what to do.

I think people want love in their lives.

Crime is just unvarnished capitalism, after all.

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance.

I am perfectly willing for my music to exist with somebody else's taste.

It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of those who oppose us.

People Really Do Respect Those who are Willing to Speak their Truth

... religious insults are considered acceptable even by those who decry slurs about race, ethnicity, and gender. Religious people seem to deserve such treatment.