What was great about the 50s is that for one brief moment - maybe, say, six weeks - nobody understood art.

The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more advantageous than another, perhaps because no one pattern ever takes precedence over the others

Most music is metaphor, but Wolff is not. I am not metaphor either. Parable, maybe. Cage is sermon.

I never feel that my music is sparse or minimalist; the way fat people never really think they're fat. I certainly don't consider myself minimalist at all

To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a human being might be free. That was my idea about sound. It still is, that they should breathe ... not to be used for the vested interest of an idea. I feel that music should have no vested interests, that you shouldn't know how it's made, that you shouldn't know if there's a system, that you shouldn't know anything about it ... except that it's some kind of life force that to some degree really changes your life ... if you're into it.

Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians.

What was great about the 50s is that for one brief moment - maybe, say, six weeks - nobody understood art.