Philip Glass

“I don't think I'm a minimalist. I don't think I was a minimalist. I think I'm a classicist.”

“Music is a place–a place to live in.”

“A truly new idea is the rarest thing in the world.”

“It's the things that you don't see coming that are the most interesting.”

“The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get four hours of rehearsal time.”

“I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm looking for people who also don't know what they're doing.”

“My whole life has been about changing the vocabulary of music.”

“For me, the most radical demand of radical art is to be clear.”

“The world of music is changing so quickly.”

“The real issue is not talent as an independent element, but talent in relationship to will, desire, and persistence. Talent without these things vanishes and even modest talent with those characteristics grows.”

“You practice and you get better. It's very simple.”

“I'm interested in the grammar of music and I'm interested in the way that people hear music.”

“I began to see that the world was not a stage but a workshop.”

“The new is always made from the old.”

“The first step in knowing is to know that we do not know.”

“What you have to do is find a way to express your own unique voice.”

“I was never interested in being a celebrity. I was interested in being a composer.”

“It's the 21st century. It's the century of knowledge.”