Aaron Copland

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.

So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.

The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.

If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.

Someone once asked me… whether I waited for inspiration. My answer was: ‘Every day!’

I’ll play it first and tell you what it is afterwards.

We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about, but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.

You don’t have to be Picasso or Rembrandt to create something. The fun of it, the joy of creating, is way high above anything else to do with the art form.

I try stuff. I synthesize what’s of value with some of the other things I have at my disposal.

I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.

Somebody asked me once, ‘Do you think that swing will ever come back?’ And I said, ‘Do you think the 1938 Form will ever come back?’

I am the sum total of everything that I have experienced musically.

Play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing even if it does take them 15, 20 years.

The jazziest American contribution to the vocabulary of English is Jazz itself.

Jazz music is haunted by its own hungry ghosts.

I want to keep redefining my work and trying new things. I want my music to be able to fit into any category. I want it to float wherever my heart goes. My music is heart music; giving it any other description is dangerous.

The word “jazz” means to me no category, but when you get stuck into wanting to do something the way it was with the “jazz emblem” or logo chained around your neck, you play in a frozen moment in time and you keep fermenting the ‘fifties saying jazz should be this way or that. Well, if jazz to me means no category, then I’ve got the green light And if it sounds like.. sounds like.. sounds like, and keeps crossing over, it’s what I wanted to do in the first place. I like the way Stravinsky and those guys did things. They expressed something, if not themselves. In fact, some people talk about expression, but expression really doesn’t mean anything to me because there’s a lot of work which goes into building a drama and then it’s up to other people to offer “expression.” Expression is such a nebulous thing.

To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren’t any.

I call myself a blues singer, but you ain’t never heard me call myself a blues guitar man.

That’s a great thing about jazz. We leave it a little space so that we have the opportunity to go where the moment takes us