I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love.

My favorite piece [piece of music] is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.

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?

What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.

When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.

If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.

Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.