“Every musician, I guess, wants to alter the world to his or her taste in some fashion… That's part of why I write music.”

“I am telling you what I know—words have music and if you are a musician you will write to hear them.”

“I know that people are interested, and I understand why, but I don't want that stuff to overshadow my life. It's just the way it is. I'm a singer, I'm in a band, I've been out with musicians, I've had children with two different musicians. To me, it's no big deal. I only get upset because I want people to listen to the songs. Listen to the LP or come and see my band. I don't like it when people write about my life and don't even mention the music.”

“I want to write music. I want to sit down right now at the piano, and write a song that people will listen to and remember. And do the same thing every morning for the rest of my life.”

“SHELLEY JACKSON: You began as a writer, moved to performance art, then architecture. I’d like to follow the traces of writing through your career, and see whether your late work could be rethought as a radically materialist practice of writing. What made you want to write?
VITO ACCONCI: I wanted to be involved with the making of some kind of parallel world. I thought, there’s no reason to go to different parts of our world, because you can write them. You can stay home, stay in a little room, and imagine all these worlds. And I wanted to do that. Why did I want to do that, I’m not sure if I can tell.”

“I want to achieve anti-fashion through fashion. That's why I'm always heading in my own direction, in parallel to fashion.”

“I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.”

“We wanted to show the influence Cuban music has had on musicians from all over, so we invited 25 of the top Latin musicians in the world, and it was a great honor they paid me. Some of them are actually inventors, like Cachao, the Cuban bassist creditied with creating mambo.”

“The only thing I'm interested in is the music and the musicians. I don't acknowledge applause 'cause I'm giving them something. They're not giving me anything with their applause. Can I write that down?”

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”