We need to have as broad a range as possible, because life itself has that kind of range.

But nevertheless, it's music ultimately that matters in opera, and opera is a piece of music reaching out as a vision in sound reaching out to the world.

Nevertheless, one doesn't have time to think, oh, well, this is a quarter tone sharp, or flat.

We need to open up the future. We also need to keep everything valuable from the past.

It's not important to me to found a school; it's not important to me to have disciples.

The way that I got involved with microtonal music was, frankly, through jazz.

We need it to capture the energy of contemporary life.

However, yes, especially as one gets older, you know, you really hope that your music will become more generally available, even though some of the performances might be riddled with faults.

In other words, I think that if an audience listens to something as an experience of how in tune it is or something of that kind, that the whole point is somehow being missed, and the music has failed.

I'm thinking in terms of a point of departure, a field of action for performers to express an expressive need of mine which hopefully the context of music would convey.

Well, the very best operas are the ones written by the very best composers.

If you look at the timing of many of the Greek dramas from the theatrical point of view, it's all off, and I think the reason for that is that music played a very important part.

I've just simply used what I've used because of the great, great expressive potential of it.

I think the composer and production staff of an opera have a real responsibility to use visual elements of all kinds to make clear to the American audience, at any rate, exactly what is going on.

What's important for me is to communicate the vision that I have in sound with the audience that's hearing it.

Well, let me, first of all, say, that as a microtonal composer, I've never been much of a theorist.

We need to have as broad a range as possible, because life itself has that kind of range.

I want the audience to be so involved in the sweep of the music.

I think I was first to do live performances on a modern electronic sound synthesizer.

Well, opera began with an intent to resuscitate Greek drama, that is, modern opera as we know it.

I think a lot of composers get into trouble just making up a plot and expecting an audience to follow that.

I really write for people.

I think one of the greatest enemies in the use of technology, however, is the idea that if you use the technology you have to throw other things out of the window.

Empathy is the lovefire of sweet remembrance and shared understanding.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

I can assure you, public service is a stimulating, proud and lively enterprise. It is not just a way of life, it is a way to live fully.

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

I love children and I love men, but I can't commit to either for the rest of my life.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

Yes, I am Algerian of Moroccan origin through my parents, but all my life is Algeria. I was born there.

At one point in your life, you'll have the thing you want or the reasons why you don't.

I tell my students to try early in life to find an unattainable objective.

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.