100 Quotes by John Zorn

People are great. But there's people who you get together with and you talk and you go away feeling energized, you feel inspired. And then there's people who you talk with and you go away feeling horrible, feeling drained, feeling like you're incapable of doing anything. Those people are psychic vampires and I now stay away from them.

You need to believe in something that's bigger than yourself. I think that's what everybody wants to believe in that.

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.

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

It's a matter of keeping people on a spontaneous edge.

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 have a very beautiful life with great friends and I look forward to waking up every day. Every day is a vacation but every day is a workday. I don't want to take vacations because music is my life and if I escape from music, that's the same thing as death. So a vacation is death to me. Sitting on the beach for a week is my idea of hell. That would kill me.

I'm constantly tortured, and that's why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies.

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