Robert Ashley quotes:

I like to talk about America. It's so mysterious.

Do not rely on unplanned music; it comes out as though it were planned, but planned by someone you cross the street to avoid.

I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera.

If a piece of music is under three minutes long, it's rock. Over three minutes, it's classical.

Opera on television in Europe is very important. If you think about it in the broadest sense: a lot of the dramas made in India with music are practically operas. They're not sung but they have a very big appeal. I don't know why American television people are so stupid but at the moment, they just seem to have some sort of a block. They just do what they do and they do it for a certain number of years. Then it wears out and they try something else. It's just a matter of time I think.