I never understood the need for a "live" audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.

An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.

Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself.

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.