Theirs [the Beatles] is a happy, cocky, belligerently resourceless brand of harmonic primitivism... In the Liverpudlian repertoire, the indulged amateurishness of the musical material, though closely rivaled by the indifference of the performing style, is actually surpassed only by the ineptitude of the studio production method. (Strawberry Fields suggests a chance encounter at a mountain wedding between Claudio Monteverdi and a jug band.)

My moods are inversely related to the clarity of the sky.

There is a craft and a power in listening.

[Bach is the] reason I became a musician

If an artist wants to use his mind for creative work, cutting oneself off from society is a necessary thing

I don't know what the effective ratio would be, but I've always had some sort of intuition that for every hour you spend in the company of other human beings, you need "x" number of hours alone. Now, what "x" represents I don't really know; it might be two and seven-eighths or seven and two-eighths, but it is a substantial ratio.

The final, unfinished fugue from The Art of Fugue is the greatest piece of music ever composed.