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

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

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

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

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.

Compositionally I always wanted to be like Fred Astaire.

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