"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."

"Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance."

"This is something special. You can attempt to have a kind of non-living music."

"I think we're all pretty odd."

"I'm outside the music I've made. I have no interest in it."

"Music remains the most strange of the materials because we don't understand what happens when music moves you."

"Public notice does not necessarily accord with internal fulfilment."

"Shiva danced the world into existence... that's a very nice thought."

"I remain a humanist. We are a very curious race."

"Beethoven suppressed everything, his personal life disappeared until he was locked inside. That is a figure quite extreme."

"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."

"Music is a performance and needs the audience."

"The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time."

"The nearest figure to myself would be Shakespeare."

"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."

"Shakespeare fascinated me. He hardly ever left the country. His imagination was worldwide though reading."

"Music is a performing art, as any Native American will tell you. It isn't there in the score."

"Characters are an extreme form in Shakespeare's theater."

"Nature has different times."