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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

On life’s journey, every person met, every place, every new word, language, scent & sound changes the traveller a little: forms who they are and whom they become

Is it any wonder that fear and anxiety have become the hallmarks of our age?

The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.

If Christ were born in Bethlehem a thousand times and not in thee thyself; then art thou lost eternally.

What impressed me about Plato and Sartre was their conviction that we should live our lives in the light of big truths about reality and human existence.

Reality is everywhere, and to find It 'you' must first disappear.

MacPherson told me that my theorem can be viewed as blah blah blah Grothendieck blah blah blah, which makes it much more respectable.

It's been a long time since NATO was created, and I also think Donald Trump has spoken very wisely about the need to rethink the mission of NATO.

We do not depend upon any external help in meditation.

Miserable people focus on what they hate about their life. Happy people focus on what they love about their life.