The business of finding a nation's soul is a long and slow one at the best and a great many prophets must be slain in the course of it. Perhaps when … - Ralph Vaughan Williams

There [is] a feeling of recognition, as of meeting an old friend, which comes to us all in the face of great artistic experiences. I had the same experience when I first heard an English folksong, when I first saw Michelangelo's Day and Night, when I suddenly came upon Stonehenge or had my first sight of New York City – the intuition that I had been there already.

Film composing is a splendid discipline, and I recommend a course of it to all composition teachers whose pupils are apt to be dawdling in their ideas, or whose every bar is sacred and must not be cut or altered.

The audience is requested not to refrain from talking during the overture. Otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins.