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

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

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

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.

I was once married to a woman who could eat anything and tell you what was in it: the most complicated recipes. Her memory of taste - now that's what I call memory!

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

No one has the Houdini school of composition.