When I Am With Composers, I Say

To Be A Success As A Broadway Composer, You Must Be Jewish Or Gay. I'm Both.

Inspiration Is Wonderful When It Happens, But The Writer Must Develop An Approach For The Rest Of The Time... The Wait Is Simply Too Long.

Even Experimental Composers, Revolutionary Composers, Self-styled Radicals Are, In Writing Revolutionary Music, Recognizing The Music That Preceded Them Precisely By Trying To Avoid It.

Perhaps The Chief Requirement Of [the Conductor] Is That He Be Humble Before The Composer; That He Never Interpose Himself Between The Music And The Audience; That All His Efforts, However Strenuous Or Glamorous, Be Made In The Service Of The Composer's Meaning - The Music Itself, Which, After All, Is The Whole Reason For The Conductor's Existence.

A Work Of Art Does Not Answer Questions, It Provokes Them; And Its Essential Meaning Is In The Tension Between The Contradictory Answers.