There is nothing like practice.

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.

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.

True heroes don't fall. They only encounter temporary setbacks as they forge ahead towards progress.

Mental development is a by-product of hard work and effort.

Religion is a set of social and political institutions and spirituality is a private pursuit which may or may not take place in a church setting.

You don't restore 'The Last Supper' by filling in the missing bits - you preserve. You accept the material that has somehow survived.

The first things to study are form and values. For me, these are the things that are the basics of what is serious in art.

All man-made religions are limited. I go my own way.

When two people are really happy about one another one can generally assume they are mistaken.

Chess is a sport. A violent sport.

If things don't seem out of control, you're not going fast enough.

Better late than never."-Dork Diaries