In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind.

The fabric of existence weaves itself whole.

The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized

Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.

Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have -- I want it that way.

Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth.

I don't write music for sissy ears.

If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.

But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.

A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?

Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

Identify your divine gift and use it to serve humanity.

Marriage is one salvation pathway among many, although it contains different possibilities.

For that thought to be strong, however, it must be free of doubt, for doubt weakens the will, weakens the response of the universe, and slows the manifestation of desire.

In love the ordinary is made sacred.

I think it's been unfortunate, but it's happened, that since the Great Recession, the gains have all gone to the top. And we need to reverse that.

Whatever anyone says, I think the opposite will happen.

Well they do have a use, but we should never believe that any international conference is going to suddenly solve problems like the condition of the global environment.

I simply want to take a break and catch my breath. But I also think that, sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is to deliberately keep some time free and see what the world throws at you.

I hope the terms of Excellency, Honor, Worship, Esquire, forever disappear from among us... I wish that of Mr. would follow them.