Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There’s no specific line, as you know.

No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think it's that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

You write it down because finally, when it's written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.

Besides merely some pleasure that we get out of the combinations of pitches together and lines, I think that there is some satisfaction that we get in the fact of having this diffuse thing organized very concretely and put onto a frame and have it actually decided.