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

"Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange "abnormal" events can lead to …"

"The composer makes plans, music laughs."

"After all, Jews invented psychiatry to help other Jews become Gentiles."

"It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-…"

"...The tragedy of music is that it begins with perfection."

"To understand what music has to be, you have to live for music. Who's ready to do that?"

"To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free as a h…"

"For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart."

"My teacher Stefan Wolpe was a Marxist and he felt my music was too esoteric at the time. And he had his studio on a p…"