A record is a concert without halls and a museum whose curator is the owner.

There's a very curious and - and almost sadistic lust for blood that overcomes the concert listener, and there's a waiting for it to happen: a waiting for the horn to fluff; a waiting for the strings to become ragged; a waiting for the conductor to forget the subdivide, you know? And it's dreadful!

Isolation is the one sure way to human happiness.

I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano... The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off.

I cannot bear assaults of any kind, and it seems to me that the Beatles essentially were out to affront and to assault.

The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.