I'm fascinated by musicians who don't completely understand their territory; that's when you do your best work.

Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation, could create music with little or no intervention on my part. That is to say, I tend towards the roles of planner and programmer, and then become an audience to the results

If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.

The whole point of art, as far as I’m concerned, is that art doesn’t make any difference. And that’s why it’s important. Take film: you can have quite extreme emotional experiences watching a movie, but they stop as soon as you walk out of the cinema. You can see people being hurt, but even though you feel those things strongly, you know they’re not real.

Good teachers realise that the students are the antenna; they are sensing things that the teachers don't yet sense.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

Possessions are a way of turning money into problems.