GYORGY LIGETI

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steinberg is great. I should like to meet him.

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

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

In January 1944 I was called up by the Forced Labor Service, but I deserted on October 10, 1944.

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

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

I don't use old music.

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

I like to stay home and listen to recordings.

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

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

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

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

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

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

It isn't false modesty when I say this, but although I am supposed to be a famous person it doesn't mean anything to me. I just sit at home and work.

Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect.

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

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