Since my first interview in 1983, when I was startled by the questions asked of me, 300 interviews later I still feel awkward and suprised by the whole process... I've been asked many times for quotes about composing, performing. about my philosophy, or my anti-philosophy. I do not consider myself such an eloquent thinker or distinctive speaker that anyone should be requesting quotes from me. I do not feel that it is my particular gift to utter profound and "quotable" truths... But I have taken notes during years of reading I would rather share than contrive anything on my own.
These are just a few thoughts that have moved me, or ideas that I've recognized as "my own" by those whose gift it is to write and speak beautifully.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Albert Einstein

"Take on a large and foolish task like Noah."
Rumi, Sufi Poet

"There are certain things that humans are not permitted to know -like what we are doing."
William Burroughs

"The utmost reward of daring should be still to dare."
Robert Frost

"Let's live suddenly without thinking, under honest trees, as a stream does."
E.E. Cummings

"The highest activity of the human being is rest."
Thomas Merton

"In the end it is our unshieldedness on which we depend."
R. M. Rilke

"Or do we imagine that one could, even in small ways, encounter the essence of truth, the essence of beauty, the essence of grace -without danger."
M. Heidegger

"A poem begins as a lump in the throat."
Robert Frost

"When I am working on a problem I thonk only of how to solve the problem, but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
R. Buckminster Fuller

"Craftsmanship, t be artistic in the final sense, must be "loving" -it must care deeply for the subject matter upon which skill is exercised."
John Dewey

"There's still a lot of great music to be written in C Major."
Arnold Schoenberg

"We work in the dark. we do what we can -we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
Henry James

"It is rough enough doing any art without asking yourself every morning if your art is sufficiently aristocratic to be worth the candle or sufficiently remote to discourage all comers."
Annie Dillard

"Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer."
Pablo Picasso

"A culture that truly grants freedom to the artist is the freedom that leaves the artist free of the necessity of justifying themselves."
Liz Story