Quotes by Gyorgy Ligeti

• New York is the dream world, the center of jazz and rock.
• There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry.
• My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist - a painter, a decorative painter.
• If you come from Paris to Budapest you think you are in Moscow.
• Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music.
• When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee.
• Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.
• Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully.
• Steinberg is great. I should like to meet him.
• Perhaps the better word is emotional yes, I am an emotional man.
• Once, in London, the BBC asked me what was my favorite English book. I said Alice in Wonderland.
• I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.
• People often thought Leopold Auer was Russian because he lived in St. Petersburg so long, almost fifty years.
• I don't use old music.
• I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.
• I write bars, for the musicians, because they have to be together.
• I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.
• I don't read such boring things. Life is too short.
• Gesualdo was very important to me, I wanted to do something which corresponded to him.
• For the past ten years I have had no financial problems.
• 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 listen to all kinds of music - new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.
• In my piano concerto I developed this polyphony to much higher complexity.
• First of all I listen to music. I like music.
• I like to stay home and listen to recordings.