“Music without the ebb and flow would be like "watching a film with only good guys in it".”

“Music is the only religion that delivers the goods.”

“The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese.”

“The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.”

“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”

“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”