Up to the age of 14 I had not heard a note of anything before 1750, never heard a note of Bach, never heard anything after Wagner, and never heard any real jazz.

I discovered that the most interesting music of all was made by simply lining the loops in unison, and letting them slowly shift out of phase with other.

All great music is contemporary. If it's still alive and kicking, then it's contemporary. If it fades away, it was a period piece. It had its moment, and that was it.

As a matter of fact, I personally would much rather hear Perotin than Mozart.

In serial music, the series itself is seldom audible... What I'm interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one in the same thing.

All music does come from a time and place. I was born and raised in New York. I moved out of New York, but it's inside of me and it will be inside of me until they put me in a box in the ground.

I'm not making any absurd comparisons between myself and Bach, but I aspire to that, that my music will have the legs to survive whatever context it finds itself in.

What I don't want to do is to go and buy a bunch of exotic-looking drums and set up an Afrikanische Musik in New York City.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

If I have found favor in thy sight, and if it be possible, and if I be meet therefore, shew me then whether there be more to come than is past, or more past than is to come.

Do something with your one life, instead of following others. While just watching your one life pass you by.

As one cat said to another: Birthdays are like fur balls - the more you have the more you gag.

I definitely don't agree with that sort of rhetoric from the United States - this idea that all the major conflicts of our age need to be solved militarily.

And he who must be a creator in good and evil: verily, he must be an annihilator first and demolish values.

If you're talking 100 years, there's no doubt in my mind that all jobs will be gone, including creative ones. And 100 years is not far in the future - some of our children will be alive in 100 years.

Whatever you choose, do it fully-with passion and childlike enthusiasm.

Man yields to death; and man's sublimest works Must yield at length to Time.

Gotta start teaching the children that they can be just what they want to be, there's much more to life than poverty.