By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There's no specific line, as you know.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I’m guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people – they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

When I was speaking about communicating, I meant that the listener – we have to reach the listener; otherwise, of course, you’re writing the piece, as I say, only for the satisfaction of seeing it on the paper for yourself, and then it ends right there.

No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think it’s that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music.

It doesn’t necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

I’m really interested in writing a piece of music that will move you, that will really move you. That is really the only reason that I’m writing music.

I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very complicated, there’s really a push to the world to try to figure out what it was that he was hearing.

I distrust anything that you don’t hear.

You write it down because finally, when it’s written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.