"I said to my friends that if I was going to starve, I might as well starve where the food is good."
"I got myself into a lovely little shall we say controversy with André Breton, by pointing out that the discipline of spontaneity, which he was asking his surrealist neophytes to adopt, was new for language but something that composers had been practicing for centuries."
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Source: Virgil Thomson (1984). “A Virgil Thomson reader”, Plume
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"Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not."
"In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise."
"I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970."
"Let your mind alone, and see what happens."
"The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish."