I would wake up in Moscow or somewhere else, my heart beating fast, feeling bitter and helpless.

For almost thirty years I repeatedly saw one and the same dream: I would arrive in Vienna at long last. I would feel really happy, for I was returning to my serene childhood.

I am not (yet) facing the problem of emigration. I want my music to be acknowledged here first of all, in this country: after that, we shall see - perhaps the question will then become urgent.

I set down a beautiful chord on paper—and suddenly it rusts.

Do you know that my very first experience as a composer was a 'Concerto for Accordion?

I attempt to compose symphonies, although it is clear to me that logically it is pointless.

For a solo work I need a definite idea. For the present I have none.

The intensity of the love of the upright is not so much to be judged by what it appears as by what the upright long for. It is our daily lament that we cannot love enough.

I tend to keep my ideas in my head. When I write something down in a notebook it's never centralized. There are too many notebooks floating around, but maybe that's a good thing.

Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are.

I met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me.

Love is the same as being lost,' says Jacques to the dark. 'Except you don't care that you're lost.

When it was seen that many of the wicked seemed quite untroubled by evil conscience ... then the idea of future suffering was advanced.

I just feel out of this world sometimes.

Women were always complications, bless their perverse little hearts.

What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road.

The song of canaries Never varies, And when they're moulting They're pretty revolting.