At one point [Cardew] taught himself to play guitar simply in order to take part in the performance in a composition by Boulez, which is a little like saying he learned Danish to read Kiekegaard.

Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange "abnormal" events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries.

The tragedy of music is that it begins with perfection.

We do not hear what we hear..., only what we remember.

The composer makes plans, music laughs.

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

Most music is metaphor, but Wolff is not. I am not metaphor either. Parable, maybe. Cage is sermon.

Music is essentially built upon primitive memory structures.

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

If you think you might have secret information listening to me, you're lost.

Compositionally I always wanted to be like Fred Astaire.

Happiness is a masterpiece: the slightest error compromises it, the slightest hesitation undermines it, the slightest excess corrupts it, the slightest vulgarity defiles it.

To fight evil, you have to understand the dark.

There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton cheese, and survived.

Can you dance?" she asked before she could stop herself. "I can," he said, affronted. "I'm really good with the slow songs.

I spent most of my time wrestling looking up at the lights.

We are trying to get a border wall to protect millions of low income Americans against folks who aren't supposed to be here. So, it's a national security.

I find writing really hard, but then, every author I know finds writing really hard work.

Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and which has the wider vision?

Tools were made and born were hands, Every farmer understands.

Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.