My primary calling, I always knew since the age of 11, was as a composer, and so that had to take priority.

After the war, once the bop revolution had taken hold, there were all kinds of young musicians, talented young musicians, who were ready for this fusion of classical and jazz.

If we could ever find that moment, maybe thousands of years from now, where all the musics of the worlds would be communicating with each other, there would be no more wars, there would be peace.

As rich as Cincinnati was in live music, New York was even more.

So this anchoring in some way, in some important way in the past without repeating the past, but on the basis of the past building something new: that is what is important.

If you mess around with jazz, you better have a good drummer and a good bass player.

Many people think of me as a modernist, as a radical in music, you know, someone who's always sort of at the avant-garde of musics, but I'm also quite a traditionalist.

Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

I don't hate work, composing is not work for me, it's my pleasure; it's my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?

I was playing in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra as principal horn. I was there for some 15 years - one of the most exciting and great musical periods in my life.

As long as I'm healthy and can keep going that's what I'll do.

God is dead and I am his replacement.

If you don’t know the direction in which you are going, the deep silence of you heart will let you know.

Negotation is a point of interection of common interest.

Judgment…is one of the ego’s tools to foster separation through comparison.

Whatever you want you must ask.You get want you want.

Intimacy makes you feel unique. Intimacy makes you feel as though you have been singled out, that someone in the world believes you have special qualities that nobody else has.

If we do not honor our past, we lose our future. If we destroy our roots, we cannot grow.

I can see the Beatles sticking together forever, really. We've been together a long time.

We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.

In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.