“He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes books.”

“The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.”

“Composer” is a word which here means “a person who sits in a room, muttering and humming and figuring out what notes the orchestra is going to play.” This is called composing. But last night, the Composer was not muttering. He was not humming. He was not moving, or even breathing. This is called decomposing.”

“Whenever he composes a critical review, I have been told, he gets an enormous erection.”

“I used to measure the skies, now I measure the shadows of Earth.Although my mind was sky-bound, the shadow of my body lies here.[Epitaph he composed for himself a few months before he died]”

“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”