“You may feel depressed, but it can’t be so depressing that you can’t move. No, I would say that people create in moments when they are elated about expressing their depression!”

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.

I don’t compose. I assemble materials.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.

A melody is not merely something you can hum.

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

A great symphony is a man-made Mississippi down which we irresistibly flow from the instant of our leave-taking to a long forseen destination.

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking “Is there a meaning to music?” My answer would be, “Yes”, And “Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?” My answer to that would be “No.”

If you want to know about the Sixties, play the music of The Beatles.

The parity of women’s health. It’s very depressing to think that you win these rights, but then you have to win them again, and again, and again, and fight the same battles over and over.

One of the most depressing features of the ethical side of the matter is that instead of such methods arousing contempt they are more or less openly admired. And this is logical.

I’ve been anxious but not depressed. I’m an incorrigible optimist.

Everyone gets depressed. But what do you do? You just go through it.

Writing is reporting what we saw after the vision has left us. It is catching the fish which the tide has left far up on our shores in the low and depressed places.

Well, my grandfather was a minister and sort of Protestant, and this was rather depressing to me.

I’d been depressed before, of course. But I’m talking about really depressed. Not just feeling a bit down or sad, a depression that has something to do with biorhythms. I’m talking about the kind of depressed that floats in upon you like a fog.

He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.