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" I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together. "

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" That was my challenge as a composer. Like with anything, to keep yourself interested in doing what you do, you set yourself challenges. So I said, Okay, I'll try to write a hundred tunes in a year. "

John Zorn

Challenge

You

Yourself

" No one sits in front of a drum set and thinks they invented it all out of whole cloth. The fact that the set is there means that you've got some dues to pay to Baby Dodds. "

" The idealists will always be in society, and we will survive. "

" One thing that I do ask myself when I'm in the creative process is, 'Does the world need this?' "

" I have wit in my work and a sense of humor, but I do not use irony in any way. "

" The magic that you find in surf music, I think, is really timeless. You know, when I was very young, I was in a surf band. Surf music is an instrumental music that still means a lot to me, not in an nostalgic way, but as something that really gets to the heart of the guitar itself. "

" Classical stuff takes a lot of rehearsal time and preparation, but with stuff that involves improvisation, you can over-rehearse it and it gets stale. You don't want it to be too comfortable. In fact, a good sound check, a good rehearsal usually means a bad performance. "

" Anything that gets in the way of my focus to create gets cut out of my life. It's not easy. Sometimes it's family. Sometimes it's friends. Sometimes it's the ability to have a relationship. "

" That's where I began to ask questions that maybe don't have one specific answer. And the more people you get answers from, the richer the environment becomes. "

" I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out. "

" When I'm writing, sometimes it gets to that place where I feel like the piece is writing itself and I'm trying not to get in the way. "

" Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now. "

" You can't be idealistic in this world and not be crazy. "

" I'm getting ready to write a piece now, and it's been six months thinking about it, changing the instrumentation, changing the name, doing more reading. "

" Music is about people for me. It's not about sounds. It's about people; it's about putting people into challenging situations. And for me, challenges are opportunities. "

" I don't ascribe to the idea of the ivory tower composer who sits alone in a room composing his masterpieces and then comes down from Mount Sinai with the tablets. It doesn't work like that. The job of a composer is putting something down on a piece of paper that will inspire the person who's playing. "

" I see myself and many artists like me as the torchbearers through these dark ages. "

John Zorn

See

Myself

" Each record in the 'Book of Angels' series is meant to be unique in terms of the compositions. "

" And I try to be as diplomatic as I can, but it always ends up being a psychodrama up there on stage. "

John Zorn

I Can

Always

" Man, Dick Dale shreds. He's welcomed to anybody's bar mitzvah. "

John Zorn

Man

Bar Mitzvah

" People sometimes have a very hard time accepting change. "

" I have not practiced saxophone since 1980. I mean, not one note. I do not pick it up in my house, and that's the end of it. "

" I'm not striving for happiness, I'm trying to get some work done. And sometimes the best work is done under doubt. Constantly rethinking and re-evaluating what you're doing, working and working until it's finished. "

" Eye was a great discovery. He is one of the great vocalists of all time. "

John Zorn

Great

Eye

" My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music. "

" Like you have seven people with their hands up. I gotta make a choice. Y'know, that's tough. Sometimes I gotta go with someone that has an idea and make several calls in a row, because they got an idea. "

" I run around, I listen to a lot of music, go to a lot of concerts. And when I see someone that gases me, I try to go out of my way to involve them somehow in what I'm doing or get involved in what they're doing. "

" If someone is a straight jazzhead, or a straight metalhead, or straight classical, they have a very narrow range of what they allow into their lives. But the people who listen to what we put out into the world have to be open-minded. Because we're so pluralist. "

" It breaks even. We lose ten, twenty grand every year. But then the people who are working say, Look, I'll kick this back in, I don't need to take this profit share. It's very cooperative. "

" I don't play favorites with people. My basic philosophy is that the only way to make the world a better place is by bringing something beautiful to every single person you run into at every moment of the day, so how can you play favorites with somebody? "