“...the important questions are answered by not liking only but disliking and accepting equally what one likes and dislikes. Otherwise there is no access to the dark night of the soul.”

“It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.”

“Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?”

“Syntax, like government, can only be obeyed. It istherefore of no use except when youhave something particular to commandsuch as: Go buy me a bunch of carrots.”

“What is the purpose of writing music? One is, of course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of a paradox: a purposeful purposeless or a purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.”

“Whereas what we need is to fumble around in the darkness, because that's where our lives (not necessarily all of the time, but at least some of the time, and particularly when life gets problematical for us) takes place.”

“In the dark, all cats are black.”