“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.”

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’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.

But I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.

I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

To attempt what old Chinese painters called ‘spirit resonance’ in melody and sound.

I’m forty-nine but I could be twenty-five except for my face and my legs.

I don’t have ‘five’ you can borrow. My piggy bank is officially anorexic.

It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

Expect only 5% of an intelligence report to be accurate.The trick of a good commander is to isolate the 5%.

I learned to ride a ten-speed when I was 4 or 5. My uncle gave me the bike, hand-me-down, and everyone used to stare at me riding up and down this block. I was too short to reach the pedals, so I put my legs through the V of the frame. I was famous. The little kid who could ride the ten-speed.

For my part I prefer fifty thousand rifles to five million votes.

Donald Trump says five things: everyone’s dumb, he’s going to make America great again, we’re going to win, win, win. He’s winning in the polls.

I play the piano passionately and inaccurately. Indeed, I worked out the other day that of my seventy-five years; I have spent at least one year sitting on a piano stool.