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—Aaron Copland
Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful—David Del Tredici
I don’t hate work, composing is not work for me, it’s my pleasure; it’s my life. So why should I stop? If something is pleasurable and exciting and rewarding, why should one stop?—Gunther Schuller