Gyorgy Ligeti

For the past ten years I have had no financial problems.

Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.

I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.

New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock.

But if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris.

But I do not want to use Hungarian verses for British people.

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.

I like to stay home and listen to recordings.

First of all I listen to music. I like music.

I write bars, for the musicians, because they have to be together.

In my piano concerto I developed this polyphony to much higher complexity.

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music.

I listen to all kinds of music - new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.

My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist - a painter, a decorative painter.

There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry.

If you come from Paris to Budapest you think you are in Moscow.

Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully.

Steinberg is great. I should like to meet him.

I don't use old music.

People often thought Leopold Auer was Russian because he lived in St. Petersburg so long, almost fifty years.

Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.

Gesualdo was very important to me, I wanted to do something which corresponded to him.

Perhaps the better word is emotional yes, I am an emotional man.

I don't read such boring things. Life is too short.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee.