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

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

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

Compositionally I always wanted to be like Fred Astaire.

I have a very dear friend, a great painter, called me up very upset, the work wasn’t going well… He asked me to come to his studio -- which I did -- I looked around at the work, dozens of sketches, drawings, large pictures, and I was very close to his work, intensely involved with his work, and he asked me, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I said, ‘Simple – it’s a loss of nerve.

If you think you might have secret information listening to me, you're lost.

I never understood what rules I was supposed to learn, and what rules I was supposed to break