Listening is active. It's like vision. It's like the idea of the eye projecting light, which I've heard is what children and infants say when they're asked to explain vision - that the eye projects light, rather than just receives it.

I don't like to treat words and sounds like objects. You have to penetrate deeply into their meaning.

In a way, all recorded music is reduced to the same level, no matter what it is. You find it in the store, you put it on and, "Oh, that's not cool. That's gangsta rap. That's white supremacist punk." But in a way, the content is removed from the intention of the people that made it. That's the commercial level of music.

I love the appropriateness of making a dogmatic statement. I support that, but that is a different level of the individual consciousness than was the source of our music.

There is some music that's truly dark, in that it's dark in terms of hopeless. But then again, the act of hope is just making the work of art.

Working with the Latin language is pretty powerful. Working with a language that is not spoken vernacularly is intense.

I think the question of actually relating emotion to music is totally interesting. I believe that it is really important on some level, but it's also important not to impose your own emotions on some music that has its own emotions.