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

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

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

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

I want to give my compliments to Australia. Ever since your government paid a few million dollars for a Jackson Pollack painting, I figure that it must be a marvellous country

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

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!