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" I was having these terrible back pains, and then one day in Switzerland, things got very bad. My wife Maryanna called the hotel doctor, but I don't remember any of this, I was out of it. I had an operation, and I was nearly lost. "

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" Suffering is a kind of ecstasy in a way. Having pain all the time makes me terribly, terribly grateful for every moment I've got. "

John Tavener

Time

Grateful

Moment

" I've always been aware of mortality because I've always had ill health most of my life. "

" 'The Whale' was in the category of so-called serious music, and yet it brings together a wide series of musical styles. It was influenced by people such as The Beatles, the spirit of the times, and I think 'The Whale' certainly had a pop element to it. "

" I don't hate pop music. I liked the Beatles, but then, I knew them. "

" I think I've been very lucky all my life because the writing and the faith seem to go together. "

" My consultant keeps telling me sudden death could come at any moment. "

John Tavener

Consultant

Moment

" The thing I regret most about my life are those inane photos of me with icons. They used to come down here and dress me up, and I just tolerated it. It's my fault. But I shouldn't have done it. They literally brought down costumes, candles, and icons! It was unbelievable stupidity. "

" Every woman I have known has actually deepened my spiritual awareness. Even if I have been a selfish man and treated them badly... There were two women, I won't name them, who had a powerful religious effect on me. The ancient idea of a muse is there. "

" My way towards God has been to write music. "

" I've written a very long piece of music recently, the 'Veil of the Temple,' which lasts about seven hours. It's really a kind of vigil. It takes place during the night, waiting for the resurrection of Christ. "

" In his late quartets, Beethoven introduces an element that shouldn't be there, that should be left for meditation, though I love them. I can see that through them came Wagner and Mahler and Schoenberg and Berg. And then came Tracey Emin. And I can see it all as one downward path. "

" I used to think there was something dirty about being paid for something which is a sacred thing to do. I can't disconnect the act of writing music from the act of prayer. If anyone tries to stop me working, it feels like someone is trying to stop me from taking communion. "

" We seem to have lost our contact with the primordial: the idea of - call it divine revelation as opposed to something that's learned by the human intellect - something that, if you lay yourself completely open, and you just open your heart completely, something will actually come into it. "

" Every time I have a hit, I buy a Rolls. "

" I think there will always be a possibility that God doesn't exist because He is infinitude and into that infinitude must come that possibility. "

" I don't think Beethoven expresses religious truth. He expresses a human truth. "

John Tavener

Think

Truth

" The music is something outside myself that's also inside myself... Music and a sense of another presence always went hand in hand. Even when I was three, I would improvise music, and my maternal grandfather would act as an audience and used to applaud. I would imitate things like thunder and rain. "

" I've got great joy from rediscovering Western music. I love Schumann and Chopin, and those amazing symphonies of Bruckner. "

" When I talk of primordial innocence, I hear it in Sufi music with the nay flute. I see it in Coptic icons, in most traditional art, particularly art of the American Indian. I find the texts extraordinarily beautiful and very childlike and very simple. I've been particularly interested in American Indian texts. "

" The path I follow is still an Orthodox path. You have to follow a path; otherwise, it becomes a little bit new-age, a bit of this, a bit of that. "