I object to background music no matter how good it is. Composers want people to listen to their music, they don't want them doing something else while their music is on. I'd like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights?
- Aaron Copland - Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
- Aaron Copland (1900 - 1990)

The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?'
My answer would be, 'Yes.'
And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?'
My answer to that would be, 'No.'
- Aaron Copland (US composer 1900 - 1990)

Done? What's that mean anyway? When is a song 'done'?
- Lars Ulrich

Doing things the way you see it, going by your own heart and soul, that is pure artistic integrity. Whatever the hair is six or sixty inches long, the eyes have make-up or not, the riffs are in 'E' or 'F' sharp, the amps are Marshall or not, all those things don't matter if you are doing it for the right reason, which to me means doing it for yourself!
- Lars Ulrich

One of my few shortcomings is that I can't predict the future.
- Lars Ulrich

They paint fucking white lines in the middle of the road and the cops tell you you can't drive there, but they don't do anything to prevent you like puting nails in the road.
- Lars Ulrich

The 'not-giving-a-fuck' meter is as far into the red-zone as ever before.
- Lars Ulrich

Life is like a permanent limp dick, with an occassional blow job. [When told by Phil that life is like a permanent cloudy day, with an occassional sunshine]

Basically, we put our songs together in very much the same way the guys in Metallica do.
- John Flansburgh-They Might Be Giants