When I came across something I liked, I wanted to find out as much as I could about it. This was as true of hearing Hoagy Carmichael for the first time as it was later when I first heard Boulez.

I was a catastrophe at Science and Games, but the good thing about Quaker schools is that they encourage you in those subjects for which you show an aptitude.

I am proud to be able to claim that, from the age of nineteen, I've managed to earna living entirely as a composer.

I realized very early that I was never going to make by living by writing string quartets. But I wanted to write music and I didn't want to have to do anything else.

I hated teaching composition. I was playing music I didn't particularly want to play, being on committees I didn't want to be on.

Being on a musical quest was something I always enjoyed.

I just scribbled away and eventually a C-major chord was there. I didn't ever decide I was going to be a composer. It was like being tall. It's what I was. It's what I did.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

I wanted to write music, and cook, and play cards, and have a nice time.

Hope is a straw hat hanging beside a window covered with frost.

All false religions cut away parts of God’s revelation, add ideas of their own, and come out with various viewpoints that differ from God’s revelation in the Bible.

This is Wall Street, and today is important. Because tomorrow, July 4th, I intended to make my first million dollars--an excitingday in a man's life. The enterprise was slightly illegal.

To bring yourself love and happiness, do what you can to bring them to others.

There is no letter of the law to follow in Zen. There is a lot of etiquette, but there are no rules.

We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn't generosity-it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.

It would be hard to name a more certain sign of poor self-esteem than the need to perceive some other group as inferior.

Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare.

Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.

We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.