For me it's the instrument. If I want to think of a flute and the state of the arts I hear a vibrato; I don't know what a flute is unless the person plays it for me

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.

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

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 composer makes plans, music laughs.

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.