»I believe that when the music stops, it stops.«
»Nobody receives awards for technical expertise in music.«
»I think all music is ethnic music… Arnold Schoenberg can tell you a great deal of what it was like in turn-of-the-century Vienna or Berlin … [but] Americans walk different streets. Every place has its own musical traditions, and this has a lot to do with how things generally sound.«
»When you are really listening your consciousness is filled with the music and wherever the music goes, that’s literarily where you are. Someone taps you on the shoulder and you come back to another reality. But when you are listening your mind is filled with the music. Wherever the music goes, you go too, if you are really listening. Obviously if you are watching TV or listening to the radio this is something different. It is a truth about human beings that they can be physically somewhere but their mind can be elsewhere and that’s really where they are.«
»Gute und ehrlich komponierte Musik reflektiert automatisch die Zeit, in der sie entstanden ist – nicht gewollt, sondern automatisch.«