People need to have enough to eat and have work and money. But there are other things that are important.

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.

I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.

I think the most important thing for a listener is to realize that he, too, should not listen to music in a passive way; that if you sit in a concert hall and expect to be moved or taken off your seat by the music, it will not happen.

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.

Children in schools need to have something to do with music and learn it the way they do literature, geography and biology.