“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 grew up in a very religious family. I could read the Qu’ran easily at the age of five.

Instead, understand that this world is just the play of the senses. It’s the five khandhas doing their thing; it has nothing to do with you.

I think the pearls – one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl – really show a kind of [society] condition.

It took us five hours to reach Tokyo, but I wasn’t bored one bit. I didn’t really get to hear so much about Nana. But I knew I would have loved… To hear what Nana had to say about herself. – Nana Komatsu

It took us five hours to reach Tokyo, but I was really happy. I kept talking about myself, and didn’t hear anything about Nana. But now that I know you better; I know you wouldn’t say anything.

We were but some tens of people throughout Algeria, a territory that is five times the size of France

Well, Brief Encounter is certainly one of my top five favorites of all time.

I was watching the Blackburn game on TV on Sunday when it flashed on the screen that George (Ndah) had scored in the first minute at Birmingham.