Aaron Copland

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It’s useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.

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

I adore extravagance but I abhor waste.

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.

Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.

I no longer feel the need of seeking out conscious Americanism. Because we live here and work here, we can be certain that when our music is mature it will also be American in quality.

Love is sweeping the country.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

A movie and a stage show are two entirely different things. A picture, you can do anything you want. Change it, cut out a scene, put in a scene, take a scene out. They don’t do that on stage.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.

Tomorrow you’ll wish you had practiced harder today.

My style is to just play. The more “live” you capture your music-the more unthought-out-the more magical it is.

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

[on Glastonbury] I started off the show and I completely messed up the music. And me, as you can imagine by this phone call, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. So it really put me into a slightly depressed state.

I’m too busy playing. When I’m playing I don’t pay attention to who’s listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don’t listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

I think that those elements – light and sound – are beyond democratic. They’re into the creative part of life.

External instruments are only extensions of the biological instrument.

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterward.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. It’s always in the middle of the night, or you’re half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them…

A band ought to have a sound all of its own. It ought to have a personality.

Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory.