"Producing a work is like making soup. You begin with individual vegetables in the soup: carrots are carrots, onions are onions, potatoes are potatoes. Then you put your vegetables into the stock and simmer. For a while, the vegetables are still vegetables, but little by little they become part of the liquid. Finally they boil down to an essence. Nothing extraneous is left, only the inevitable and delicious mixture the soup has become. Similarly, I try to let the elements of a work exist on their own until it is time to put them into a form. Part of the artistic process is distinguishing between the mind of judgment, which anticipates results and cuts off impulses, and the mind of discriminating intelligence, which sees clearly and at the right time what needs letting go."

(Meredith Monk)