Philip Glass Quotes

I don't know what I'm doing and it's the not knowing that makes it interesting.

You practice and you get better. It's very simple.

A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.

You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That’s the only secret.

The work I've done is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing.

What I've noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer.

What you hear depends on how you focus your ear. We're not talking about inventing a new language, but rather inventing new perceptions of existing languages.

I travel the world, and I'm happy to say that America is still the great melting pot - maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it.

If you don't have a basis on which to make the choice, then you don't have a style at all. You have a series of accidents.

If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely.

It doesn't need to be imagined, it needs to be written down.

There's almost no content in terms of language at all. I don't like using language to convey meaning. I'd rather use images and music.

My biggest problem about writing is whenever I write piano pieces, because I then have to learn to play them, which is sometimes not so easy.

In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with.

I always knew what I wanted to do and I did it.

The hardest thing about traveling is that mostly you get to a point - and it always happens on every tour - where you can choose between eating and sleeping, but you can't do both.

I'd say the differences are more interesting than the similarities at this point. Certainly no one would ever mistake my music for Steve's [ Reich].

I, as a young guy getting out of music school, I didn't like the prospect of spending my life writing music for about 200 people.

I don't think I'm capable of making radical changes, but over a period of four or five years you can perceive very big changes, and they seem rather small at the time.

I'd say it's just part of the world that we live in; it's part of the music world.

I like the idea that [Mahatma] Gandhi is appearing now in an opera hall in all these different places, and people kind of think about it again.