Morton Feldman

The most interesting aspect for me, composing exclusively with patterns, is that there is not one organizational procedure more advantageous than another,…

— Morton Feldman

Art in relation to life is nothing more than a glove turned inside out. It seems to have the same shapes and…

— Morton Feldman

Since music has never had a Rembrandt, we have remained nothing more than musicians.

— Morton Feldman

Any professional knows that the flute and the piano is a boring combination. All you've got to arrive at is a kind…

— Morton Feldman

For me it's the instrument. If I want to think of a flute and the state of the arts I hear a…

— Morton Feldman

For years I said if I could only find a comfortable chair I would rival Mozart.

— Morton Feldman

Most music is metaphor, but Wolff is not. I am not metaphor either. Parable, maybe. Cage is sermon.

— Morton Feldman

I'm not suspicious, I'm just careful.

— Morton Feldman

I want to give my compliments to Australia. Ever since your government paid a few million dollars for a Jackson Pollack painting,…

— Morton Feldman

I never feel that my music is sparse or minimalist; the way fat people never really think they're fat. I certainly don't…

— Morton Feldman

If you think you might have secret information listening to me, you're lost.

— Morton Feldman

I've been living with the minor second all my life and I finally found a way to handle it.

— Morton Feldman

No one has the Houdini school of composition.

— Morton Feldman

The tragedy of music is that it begins with perfection.

— Morton Feldman

It appears to me that the subject of music, from Machaut to Boulez, has always been its construction. Melodies of 12-tone rows…

— Morton Feldman

What was great about the 50s is that for one brief moment - maybe, say, six weeks - nobody understood art.

— Morton Feldman

We do not hear what we hear..., only what we remember.

— Morton Feldman

After all, Jews invented psychiatry to help other Jews become Gentiles.

— Morton Feldman

Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange "abnormal" events can lead to the feeling…

— Morton Feldman

To understand what music has to be, you have to live for music. Who's ready to do that?

— Morton Feldman

At one point [Cardew] taught himself to play guitar simply in order to take part in the performance in a composition by…

— Morton Feldman

To me, I took a militant attitude towards sounds. I wanted sounds to be a metaphor, that they could be as free…

— Morton Feldman

I was once married to a woman who could eat anything and tell you what was in it: the most complicated recipes.…

— Morton Feldman

“Wonderful aphorism - but we can't take refuge in aphorisms.”

— Morton Feldman

I never understood what rules I was supposed to learn, and what rules I was supposed to break

— Morton Feldman