When you're working with music that is invariably better than you are, it's difficult to become swell-headed.
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.
I finally wasn't interested in writing music that played while actors talked.
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.
Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.
A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.
I've had the healthy and sobering experience of constantly working with music that is invariably better than any performance of it can be.