I run around so much that I finally reasoned that composing is the one musical endeavour which you can do anywhere, anytime.
A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.
The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played.
I've had the healthy and sobering experience of constantly working with music that is invariably better than any performance of it can be.
I finally wasn't interested in writing music that played while actors talked.
When you're working with music that is invariably better than you are, it's difficult to become swell-headed.
At MGM, you knew you were going to be working next year; you knew you were going to get paid. But I was too ambitious musically to settle for it. And I wanted to gamble with whatever talent I might have had.
Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.
When I composed, I heard my music played by the orchestra within days of completion of the score. No master at a conservatory, no matter how revered, can teach as much by verbal criticism as can a cold and analytical hearing of one's own music being played.