Aaron Copland

You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today.

Some twenty years ago, during the course of a memorable evening at the Stravinskys’ home in Los Angeles, the venerable maestro turned to me and said in no uncertain terms: ‘My dear, you should conduct your own music. All composers should conduct their own music!

The melody is generally what the piece is all about.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach.

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.

I look for a deep, gutty feelin’ in a guitar tone. I don’t use picks. People ask, “How you get that?” It’s just there. There’s a lot of people try to play real fast chords-da da da da da-that ain’t the hard, solid blues. It’s synthetic. It has not feeling to it. You sit down and play some funky, funky guitar. Take your time! Don’t rush it. Just let it come flowing through you. I can play guitar so funky, it’ll bring teardrops to your eyes.

There’s only one bass player in a band. I’m the best bass player of any band I’m in.

Jazz was born out of the whiskey bottle, was raised on marijuana, and will expire on cocaine.

Early on, I figured out that when the top of a guitar is vibrating and a string is vibrating, you’ve got a conflict. One of them has got to stop, and it can’t be the string, because that’s making the sound. So in 1934, I asked the Larson Brothers—Chicago instrument makers—to build me a guitar with a half-inch-thick maple top and no f-holes. They thought I was crazy.

Men have died for this music. You can’t get more serious than that.

If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all

I started in New Orleans music and played all through the history of Jazz.

When I heard T-Bone, I flat out lost my mind.

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.

Being so inescapably a part of it, I’ll never know what the listener gets, what the listener feels and that’s too bad.

The true musician is to bring light into people’s hearts.

I’m sure critics have their purpose, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn’t, I don’t really see a point to it.

If there is no dance, there is not music.