My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.

Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

Composing for the prepared piano is not a criticism of the instrument. I'm only being practical.

If this word "music" is sacred and reserved for eighteenth and nineteenth century instruments, we can substitute a more meaningful term: organization of sound.

Some people take music too seriously, and some don't take it seriously enough, others take it just right.

I was shocked at college to see one hundred of my classmates in the library all reading copies of the same book. Instead of doing as they did, I went into the stacks and read the first book written by an author whose name began with Z. I received the highest grade in the class. That convinced me that the institution was not being run correctly. I left.

When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.