I was born in Somerville, but I don't remember very much about it because we moved from there to Arlington when I was five years old, and it was in Arlington that I spent most of my childhood.

The composer...joins Heaven and Earth with threads of sounds.

I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God.

My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing. To attempt what old Chinese painters called 'spirit resonance' in melody and sound.

I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn't know anything about it.

This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of... well, my grandfather was a minister and sort of Protestant, and this was rather depressing to me.

It's hard for me to think of others because I'm not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

My mother's background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.

To me, atonality is against nature. There is a center to everything that exists. The planets have the sun, the earth, the moon.

I did all kinds of things in order to earn a living.

The greater the emotional intensity, the greater the simplicity.

You make beauty and it disappears, I love that.

Got to be who you are in this world, no matter what.

Get a dream, hold on to it and shoot for the sky.

Golf is a puzzle without an answer. I've played the game for 40 years and I still haven't the slightest idea how to play.

The worst program in the world, if you believe in it 100%, is better than a great program that you don't believe in.

I don't like to sing loud.

I don't want to be so confident in myself.

Anything that begins 'I don't know how to tell you this' is never good news.

Your faith depends on the strength of its object...a puny god just won't do.

Watch tonight, pray tomorrow. Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you!