“The melody is generally what the piece is all about.”

Mozart tapped the source from which all music flows, expressing himself with a spontaneity and refinement and breathtaking rightness.

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.

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.

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!

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.”

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

Emerson stands apart from the other poets and essayists of New England, and of English literature generally, as of another order.

Advances have fallen, generally, for everything except the biggest potential bestsellers.

You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.

Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already.

Politics is so difficult, it’s generally only people who aren’t quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

Only brand names register in the mind… What you should generally do is take a regular word and use it out of context to connote the primary attribute of your brand.