If something is successful with the audience, it's automatically suspect; the reverse is to say that not to reach audiences is the greatest compliment an artist can receive!

It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.

We think the Puritans always dressed in black and white, which they didn't. They loved very bright colors. And there were other differences in perceptions that gave one a very different view of them.

Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.

I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.

The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly want and who is destroyed by his personal demons.

Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast.

There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is distinctly superior in whatever way.

What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.

If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.

I find it enormously valuable to be sure that that the pacing is what I think it is and that the scenes have the shape I think they have musically and dramatically.

One must read poetry with one's nerves.

When someone hurts you over and over, ask yourself, WHY DO YOU LET THEM?

Practice the pause. Pause before judging. Pause before assuming. Pause before accusing. Pause whenever you're about to react harshly and you'll avoid doing and saying things you'll later regret.

Guess I am going to take a man-nap. Wake me up when there is food.

History never looks like history when you are living through it.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.

I live my life and I do what I do, and sometimes you forget that people are watching you.

True believers just don't see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn't be true believers anymore.

For more and more of us, home has less to do with a piece of soil than a piece of soul.

In dreams and visions lie the greatest creations of man, for on them rests no yoke of line or hue.