“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.

It’s hard for me to think of others because I’m not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

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

My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing.

The greater the emotional intensity, the greater the simplicity.

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.

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

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

She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.

There is nothing like practice.

The planets have the sun, the earth, the moon.

I did all kinds of things in order to earn a living.

I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano.

My mother’s background was Scottish.

This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of.

As a painter, I realized that what we see is just manifestation of unseen power.

If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I’m an artist, I hate saying that.

You know, it’s no accident that the great painters came from areas like Europe where there is a lot of clouds and rain, which begets color and subtle washes of tone.

Hands are the tool of the painter, the artist.

What I did for my last act as a painter, if you call me a painter, was to photograph the weave of the canvas, and enlarge it and enlarge it until it became like a landscape.

A painter’s got a canvas. The writer’s got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence.

It is not right for painters to think that painting is like prostitution, that ‘first you do it for love, then you do it for others, and finally you do it for money.

Am I in love? Absolutely. I’m in love with ancient philosophers, foreign painters, classic authors, and musicians who have died long ago. I’m a passionate lover.