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

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 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.

What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?

Her survival and thriving truth has been marred with black ties of words, intentions, behavior and presence.

Living gives you a better understanding of life.

Every living thing like a mountain stream that flows out o’er the land. I volunteer for the journey from here to heaven’s gate. I will do my part I place my heart in Your gracious hands.

Cameras, in short, were clocks for seeing, and perhaps in me someone very old still hears in the photographic mechanism the living sound of the wood.

Ian MacKaye was in London while I was living there. We both decided that even though we had very different lifestyles.

But when I would write a story – I know it’s going to sound almost ridiculous and infantile – I would, in a way, start living it.

Great compassion penetrates into the marrow of the bone. It is the support of all living beings.