Aaron Copland

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.

Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

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

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!

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

You get what you ask for in this life. If you ask for nothing, you get nothing.

Should a man quit at 40 he is failure-Retire at that age is sorry failure.

I have survivor’s curiosity, I guess.

In this life you have to learn to get up because the road is full of stones.

I don’t follow what everybody else does.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

For them that think death’s honesty won’t fall upon them naturally life sometimes must get lonely.

If we knew the meaning to everything that is happening to us, then there would be no meaning.

It isn’t true that you live only once. You only die once. You live lots of times if you know how.

When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it’s only a minute. But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.

Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?

When you doubt the brilliance of your shine, I will take you through my darkness. I will show you where you shine the brightest.

Life is a marathon, it’s not a sprint.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

You need to face the pain and the fear and walk through the Grief.