"When the last bell has tolled the Twentieth Century, the Distinguished Service Cross shall flap proudly from the breast of Scientific Achievement. By unanimous acclaim the Purple Heart will go to creative art. With bewilderment we shall regard the only century in history man and his art were thoroughly misunderstood."

"Humanity is a deep well. The artist throws a pebble into the well. Despairingly he turns when, suddenly, he hears a splash. So our artists in the creation of a culture search for a response in the deep well of the American People."

"I write for a living audience, for a living stage."

Art can only exist among people for whom it is deliberately intended. The moral in Art is that it is without morality -- an expression of any given period. The artist who understands this will equally be understood by the people who listen to his music: for it is not an expression of himself but an image of what we are."

"The only difference between a bum and a composer is a composer's a bum with talent."

"Music today has to have the quality of intensity. Today people think in swift and tense ways."

"The thing we must learn in America is that music is an art. It's a serious art. It's not just serious because I say so, it's serious because it affects our own wellbeing."

"No matter when your formal education begins, the most important thing a creative artist can do is to come in touch with life in order to write about it."

"I can only write when I'm possessed with an idea which I can no more shake than a man who is possessed with the lust for a woman. It is a physical, an organic, a human factor."