No one has the Houdini school of composition.

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

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

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

For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.

Art in relation to life is nothing more than a glove turned inside out. It seems to have the same shapes and contours, but it can never be used for the same purpose. Art teaches nothing about life, just as life teaches us nothing about art.

At one point [Cardew] taught himself to play guitar simply in order to take part in the performance in a composition by Boulez, which is a little like saying he learned Danish to read Kiekegaard.