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

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.

The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.

It looks like the future's really bright.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Race horses are like golfers, you're never sure how they're going to come out of the stalls. It's just - hopefully the horses come out of the race all right, just fit and ready to go again in the near future, but 3rd was good. It's paid for its hay.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

In 1975 I decided that there was no future in flying (airline jobs were impossible to get, and who wants a job where you are judged only by seniority?) and headed off to grad school.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

And while the U.S. can never be 100 percent safe from a future strike, our government is working around the clock on measures to protect the American people.

No one is more important to the future of our state than our teachers.

We believe that peace is not just signed papers, but rather a contract between generations for the building of a more promising and less threatening future.

What I'm suggesting to you is that this could be a renaissance. We may be on the cusp of a future which could provide a tremendous leap forward for humanity.

Yet, our achievements also mask many continuing failings and seem to expose more future dangers.

I mean that at least 80% of the Russian people feel destitute. It's the people who had their past and future taken from them - they don't get paid - many of them face a wall. They have nowhere to go.

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

It also allows you to look as though you're not particularly from the present, future or past, either.

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

The transfer is a monumental occasion as the Iraqi people take control of their government and their future and forge ahead with creating a society governed by the tenets of life, liberty and freedom.

The future and eternity are two entirely different things.

Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.

To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

I believe that Canadians have the common sense to see that a better future cannot be built on fragmentation.