I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture.

But if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris.

Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee

Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect.

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully

Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.

I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.

. . . there is a wish in the heart of mankind to be distracted and confused. Truth is but one attraction, and not always the most powerful.

Stars give so much to the world without demanding payment. Be likewise.

Keep the dreams of your youth very close to your heart.

Why tomorrow when there is today?

Family is the place where acceptance and validation are most needed, but often the hardest to find.

Abroad is unutterably bloody and foreigners are fiends.

The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries.

Now we are expected to be as wise as men who have had generations of all the help there is, and we scarcely anything.

My hat's in the ring. The fight is on and I'm stripped to the buff.