I've seldom become nostalgic or settled.
Nature has different times.
The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.
I remain a humanist. We are a very curious race.
My true function within a society which embraces all of us is to continue an age-old tradition. This tradition is to create images from the depths of the imagination and to give them form, whether visual, intellectual or musical.
The nearest figure to myself would be Shakespeare.
Music is a performing art, as any Native American will tell you. It isn't there in the score.
Shakespeare fascinated me. He hardly ever left the country. His imagination was worldwide though reading.
This is something special. You can attempt to have a kind of non-living music.
The Greek sculptor - I don't think he was very different from any of us.
Beethoven suppressed everything, his personal life disappeared until he was locked inside. That is a figure quite extreme.
I think we're all pretty odd.
Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.
I am quite certain in my heart of hearts that modern music and modern art is not a conspiracy, but is a form of truth and integrity for those who practise it honestly, decently and with all their being.
Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance.
I'm outside the music I've made. I have no interest in it.
Shiva danced the world into existence... that's a very nice thought.
Public notice does not necessarily accord with internal fulfilment.
Characters are an extreme form in Shakespeare's theater.
Music is a performance and needs the audience.
