One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife

The fabric of existence weaves itself whole.

The possibilities of percussion sounds, I believe, have never been fully realized

Stand up and take your dissonance like a man.

Please don't try to make things nice! All the wrong notes are right. Just copy as I have -- I want it that way.

Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth.

I don't write music for sissy ears.

If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.

But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.

A song has a few rights the same as ordinary citizens... if it happens to feel like flying where humans cannot fly... to scale mountains that are not there, who shall stop it?

Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?

Men may act as cruelly as dragons, but dragons will never act as men do.

To be a professional you have to act like one as well..

Hon, falling in love is easy. Staying in love is the tough part." ~Faith Barnett from Texas Tangle

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

My uncle's house burned down when I was 6 years old. We got out safely. But ever since, I've had a nightmare of dying in a fire.

We are the second oldest state in the Union because too many of our young people are leaving Pennsylvania. They are leaving Pennsylvania behind for opportunities elsewhere.

Blood is thicker than water, but politics are thicker than blood.

There are more Negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls.

I try to keep my characters raising more questions than giving answers. I don't want to leave too much on the table. I want you to have your connection and your secret understanding of the character.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.