Aaron Copland

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

You may be sitting in a room reading this book. Imagine one note struck upon the piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of the room – proving that the sound element in music is a powerful and mysterious agent, which it would be foolish to deride or belittle.

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.

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

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

I don’t compose. I assemble materials.

I learn something new every day.

It angers me how scholars associate the blues strictly with tragedy.

I’m no good with chords. I’m horrible with chords.

If you want to play somebody’s music, you’d better go into his house.

We might as well swing boys, because Stravinsky cuts us all.

If you must listen to bad music, please use headphones.

Practice 15 or 20 years and then it comes out spontaneously.

The music field was the first to break down racial barriers, because in order to play together, you have to love the people you are playing with, and if you have any racial inhibitions, you wouldn’t be able to do that.

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.

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

I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn’t remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn’t trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like ‘Wow, it’s a tune’.

What I learned the most from Prince was putting art first, being creatively ambitious, and putting creativity at the forefront of what I do.

I’ve found you’ve got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.

I started playing piano when I was 6. And I knew that wanted to be involved in that form of expression, whether it was through music, or acting, or dancing, or painting, or writing.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.