I wanted to write music, and cook, and play cards, and have a nice time.

I was a catastrophe at Science and Games, but the good thing about Quaker schools is that they encourage you in those subjects for which you show an aptitude.

I am proud to be able to claim that, from the age of nineteen, I've managed to earna living entirely as a composer.

When I came across something I liked, I wanted to find out as much as I could about it. This was as true of hearing Hoagy Carmichael for the first time as it was later when I first heard Boulez.

I realized very early that I was never going to make by living by writing string quartets. But I wanted to write music and I didn't want to have to do anything else.

I hated teaching composition. I was playing music I didn't particularly want to play, being on committees I didn't want to be on.

Being on a musical quest was something I always enjoyed.

I just scribbled away and eventually a C-major chord was there. I didn't ever decide I was going to be a composer. It was like being tall. It's what I was. It's what I did.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

Dare to make major changes to reach your newly discovered destiny

To torture a man you have to know his pleasures.

I only have one superstition: I make sure to touch all the bases when I hit a home run.

Why is a woman's sexuality always under so much scrutiny? Why can't she do exactly what she please without being called a million things?

I'm not a lawmaker, but I was thinking that if you have a really loud ring tone, maybe you should be stabbed in the ear?

The New York Times, they lie. They lie like I've never seen anything.

That thing about being an icon, the fifth Beatle, I just found it so freaky.

Each time that I have two or three days off, I'm off somewhere in California.

Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?

Every individual has in himself perfection. It lies within the dark recesses of his physical being.