Now that we have everything we need, we discover that there is almost nothing that we have that we want

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic - here on Sixth Avenue, for instance - I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound... I don’t need sound to talk to me.

As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.

Why do you not do as I do? Letting go of your thoughts as though they were the cold ashes of a long dead fire?

It was at Harvard not quite forty years ago that I went into an anechoic [totally silent] chamber not expecting in that silent room to hear two sounds: one high, my nervous system in operation, one low, my blood in circulation. The reason I did not expect to hear those two sounds was that they were set into vibration without any intention on my part. That experience gave my life direction, the exploration of nonintention. No one else was doing that. I would do it for us. I did not know immediately what I was doing, nor, after all these years, have I found out much. I compose music.

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

You can feel an emotion; just don't think that it's so important.