If you've ever had to recall your past in some way and you open a drawer of old photographs that your parents kept, there are always pictures of you smiling and charming, and then a bunch of people you don't know who they are. Could be aunts, uncles, could be the postman for all you know. Who are these people? Your parents are never in the picture, because they are the ones taking them. So you've got these unrelated images that are disconnected from your memories.

It's one thing to write the music, it's another thing to write it down, it's another thing to play it, and something else altogether again to learn how to play it. These are the elements that are fascinating, and, you know, move my world.

I think ingenuity is part of our DNA. That plus curiosity, plus the willingness to commit.

Live concerts were to train the ears and to introduce, constantly, new musical ideas to the audience so the next time they showed up or the next record they would be ready and receptive.

If you think about how long it takes to write a piece of music for an orchestra, it's outrageous to me, outrageous.

Frank [Zappa] always wanted to do a sound library - he sampled so many great musicians. For piano, for example, he sampled every octave, not just one (that you could just transpose electronically), and he did all different types of attack, with and without pedals, all that kind of stuff.

When you have a single composer writing his work, it shouldn't be doled out in singles based on the length of a piece.