Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts

[first lines]

Philip Glass:
[voiceover] I never was a captive of other people's ideas about me. Whatever they thought, that didn't bother to me, I did what I wanted to, and um - I didn't care. I've been like that my whole life, and - it saved me a lot of trouble. Even when it came to writing music I didn't care what people thought. You know, there's a lot of music in the world, you don't have to listen to mine. There's Mozart, there's the Beatles, listen to something else! You don't have to listen to this. You have my blessings, go on, listen to something else, I don't care.

[last lines]

Philip Glass:
I have a friend, uh, who's a writer. And he says that his writing is the antidote to the chaos of the world around him. I think, uh, that's a good description. He retreats into that world. That becomes more important to him than the world he sees. Uh, I suppose, uh, some people might not think that's such a great thing but he thinks it is. It's all real, it's just what you choose to establish as the core of your being. He makes the core of his life - oh, an act of imagination. Is it escape or is it liberation? I don't know. You tell me, I don't know, I have no idea, I don't know anything about these things. For him, that person, um, writing - is a, um - it's a reso - resolution of his life. It - it - it makes his life solid and real. Without, without that the world would overwhelm him with its chaos. So is it escape to become sane? Or - or is the insanity of the world - so which is the escape? I don't know.

[Applause, indistinct conversations]