It is still true that it is easier to compose a poem in the form of a manual for adjusting a VCR than it is to write a piece using just tuning as a symphony.

Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.

The past nine years in San Diego have represented such a period of questioning.

In any case, the fewer boundaries that exist hindering free movement between all forms of articulate human cognition, the better.

The idea of 'machine assemblage' is, especially, very alien to my sensibility, since it suggests a relative indifference of the strata to one another during the process of construction.

What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?

The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.

In my model, important interference phenomena arise when individual strata come into contact. These chaotic fluctuations are, I suppose, what my music is really about.

There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation.

Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.

I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That's how things sometimes go.

The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord." Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.

Tightness takes more energy than the letting go.

Man is a phase of nature, and only as he is related to nature does he matter, does he have any account whatever above the dust.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard Some do it with a bitter look Some with a flattering word The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword.

Envy blinds men and makes it impossible for them to think clearly.

What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy, The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy, Is virtue's prize.

Take advantage of this great opportunity in your life to live it well, to be good, to have good works, and to influence other people for good.

Love is something that comes to us in life. Quietly, it overwhelms us. It is something that you cultivate. You make it happen.

People tend to favor the underdog, like in the movies we favor the underdog, but when it comes to voting, we vote for the bully. It's so strange.

Everything is s*** because we lost.