A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.
Frank Zappa

A composer knows that music is written by human beings for human beings and that music is a continuation of life, not something separated from it.
Hanns Eisler

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
Igor Stravinsky

A nation creates music - the composer only arranges it.
Mikhail Glinka

Aaron Copland was a man that had a very specific point of view about what music should be which was that, he felt that new music should have the composer should show a personality in his music.
Elliott Carter

Americans can pretty much sing anything, whereas foreign singers are often limited in style, language, even composer.
Marilyn Horne

Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher than himself.
John Philip Sousa

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
Gian Carlo Menotti

Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.
Lion Feuchtwanger

At the same time, one of the things I noticed was that the moment there was any kind of audio attached to virtual reality, it really improved the experience, even though the audio didn't feel like a sound engineer or composer had been anywhere near it.
Thomas Dolby

Because I have sixty years of being a professional composer, conductor, musician, whatever, and you develop a lot of friendships and you get involved with a lot of sort of long-term commitments and obligations.
Gunther Schuller

Do you know that my very first experience as a composer was a 'Concerto for Accordion?'
Alfred Schnittke

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.
Hector Berlioz

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.
Gustav Mahler

I am a composer, horn player, and computer programmer.
Robert Patterson

I am but an architectural composer.
Alexander Jackson Davis

I am not so complicated or intelligent a composer, nor am I very interested in becoming so. I am much more happy doing what I know I can do than what I am not sure I could do.
Giorgio Moroder

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.
Gavin Bryars

I began my career with infantile dreams of becoming a composer.
Ivor Novello

I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.
Gyorgy Legeti