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

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.

People aren't born strong. People grow stronger little by little, encountering difficult situations, learning not to run from them.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

You must remember that democracy is made up not only of the executive, but the legislature and the judiciary.

[Vincent Price] was the funniest damn guy I ever met.

Oh Rome! My country! City of the soul!

I was either going onstage or going into an interview or getting on a plane. You can't really feel everything fully when you don't have the time to process.

Like many other kids, I liked watching anime.

Sin is bad in the eye, worse in the tongue, worse still in the heart, but worst of all in the life.

I would rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.