Boulez, who is everything I don't want art to be... Boulez, who once said in an essay that he is not interested in how a piece sounds, only how it is made.

The composer makes plans, music laughs.

Do we have anything in music that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away?

Music is essentially built upon primitive memory structures.

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

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

To understand what music has to be, you have to live for music. Who's ready to do that?