"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew."-Robert Frost
"The poet does not know what he has to say until he has said it."-T.S. Eliot
"The poet does not know what he has to say until he has said it."-T.S. Eliot
"The serious composer who thinks about his art will sooner or later have occasion to ask himself: why is it so important to my own psyche that I compose music? What makes it seem so absolutely necessary, so that every other daily activity, by comparison, is of lesser significance? And why is the creative impulse never satisfied; why must one always begin anew? To the first question- the need to create- the answer is always the same- self-expression; the basic need to make evident one's deepest feelings about life. But why is the job never done? Why must one always begin again? The reason for the compulsion to renewed creativity, it seems to me, is that each added work brings with it an element of self-discovery. I must create in order to kow myself, and since self-knowledge is a never-ending search, each new work is only a part-answer to the question 'who am I?' and brings with it the need to go on to other and different part-answers."-Composer Aaron Copland's review of Charles Eliot Norton lectures of 1951-1952 Music and Imagination.
