Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.

Yes, I get a report from BMI about the frequency of performances, and it is very surprising. They played one of my most advanced pieces, and one of my most unusual ones on the radio.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My entire life has really revolved around music that was written about the time that I was born, 1908, to just before the First World War and shortly after it. This music I've always known, and it is that music that's most important to me.

Silences between movements are employed only in order to bring the opposing duo to the fore.

Right at the end of the war I wrote a piano sonata, which was written at a time when Sam Barber used to come down here and we used to have lunch together in a very nice old hotel that's now not there.

That was one of the big problems when I was at Harvard studying music. We had to write choral pieces in the style of Brahms or Mendelssohn, which was distressing because in the end you realized how good Brahms is, and how bad you are.

Almost every one of my various zero numbered birthdays has had a big concert in London and often in Paris.

I've known those pieces ever since I was about 16 or 17; I also at that time was taken to meet Charles Ives whom I got to know fairly well. He was the one who wrote a recommendation for me to get into college.

It was only later on that I became more interested in older music.

When I was in Paris, all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.

Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America.

These wealthy people were very interested in contemporary music. They wanted to help diffuse it and get it to be known to other people.

The Quartets have been a major part of my work.

I mean the public likes it more in Europe than they do here because the state supported organizations have felt that playing contemporary music was part of the education of the public.

Then, when the Depression came, all of this changed completely. Since that time, the entire public is of a very different sort and there was not so much support for contemporary music in a direct way.

Well I tried to, but I could never write anything that I liked or was worthwhile. I threw it all out and realized that I had to make a serious study- that my tastes were far more advanced than my abilities.

In any case, Ives encouraged me to go into music even though he himself had such a hard time being a composer.

An auditory scenario for the players to act out with their instruments.

Why write for the orchestra? For one thing it's a very challenging problem.

Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music.

Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.

The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection

Katherine Heigl was a movie star. I thought she was going to be one, and it was fun to watch this young actress getting better every day.

Good judgement comes from experience. Sometimes, experience comes from bad judgement.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Lust is a pleasure bought with pains, a delight hatched with disquiet, a content passed with fear, and a sin finished with sorrow.

What makes me different from everybody else just boils down to dissatisfaction.

To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.

Love sets your heart free. Be not afraid: dig deep, Take a deep breath And reach for the sky In your lover's heart.

As a father, I always want my son to be perfect. When he was young, I tried to train him in martial arts, but he said, 'I don't want to become like Bruce Lee's son, with everybody telling me how good my father was.' I just think my son is too lazy.

By the law of Christ, every man is bound to love his neighbour as himself; but every servant is a neighbour of every civil lord; therefore every civil lord must love any of his servants as himself; but by natural instinct, every lord abhors slavery; therefore, by the law of charity, he is bound not to impose slavery on any brother in Christ.

Anything you can do to help someone, I just think it's so important because there's a lot of kids that look up athletes of all size and shapes in a lot of different fields, not necessarily in the basketball field. They get involved emotionally with those people because there's something about certain athletes that people rally around.

Lots of places to hone your skill as an artist and still earn a paycheck while you're waiting to kick the door down.

Nothing is more singular about this generation than its addiction to music.

Feminists bore me to death. I follow my instinct and if that supports young girls in any way, great. But I'd rather they saw it more as a lesson about following their own instincts rather than imitating somebody.

My intentions are to try to make this state better.

We transform our relationships when we listen with our ears hearts and souls.

When I ride, I always like to look neat.

Submission to the Scriptures is submission to God. Rebellion against the Scriptures is rebellion against God.

All we have is our vote. But it's powerful.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

Show me a man with very little money and I will show you a bum.

I've had to fight for roles and I've lost a hundred roles, but 'Smoking' and 'Smith' were phone calls. That's the dream.

My grandparents left the Pale of Settlement at the border of western Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, fleeing anti-Semitism and hoping to make a better life for their children in America.

I think that people need to become more educated about money. We need to stop creating systems that benefit only the most-cutthroat sharks.