I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people - they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.

We should all strive to be extraordinary, and that starts with a focus on our own capabilities instead of those of our opponents.

I think a lot of people were like, "Oh, you're 13, you're gonna rebel." But I was never in public school and I was never really forced to do much of anything, as a kid.

Fundamentalists believe Jesus was God becoming man. I believe that Jesus was man becoming God.

Prana is an element of energy. Energy is a manifestation of a certain principle which in Indian cosmology they call shakti, or spiritual power. Don't worry about the words too much.

How deeply bound by cords of family anger we all are[...]None of us breaks free.

Pork was in 1971, and I stopped hanging out at The Factory by like 1973.

People would say, Can we develop a sitcom around you? and I would say, Not interested. I'm very happy doing standup and writing and taking my kids to school.

The problems of language here are really serious. We wish to speak in some way about the structure of the atoms. But we cannot speak about atoms in ordinary language.