'Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.
? I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
A good composer is slowly discovered a bad composer is slowly found out.
A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges.
A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time.
A musicologist is a man who can read music but cannot hear it.
A song will outlive all sermons in the memory.
A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
A woman's two cents worth is worth two cents in the music business.
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
Alas! all music jars when the soul's out of tune.
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
All my concerts had no sounds in them; they were completely silent. People had to make up their own music in their minds!
Americans want grungy people, stabbing themselves in the head on stage. They get a bright bunch like us, with deodorant on, they don't get it.
Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.
Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently.
Canned music is like audible wallpaper.