Yeah...I get the Steve Reich issue, mainly from having studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen right around 9/11. Stocki made this statement that was 100% a self-boobytrap, stating in a presser that he thought that the 9/11 attacks were "...the greatest work of Lucifer's art perpetuated upon mankind".
Self-boobytrap? Yep...because there was a axe-grindy reporter there from the Hamburg (I think) newspaper who quoted all of that EXCEPT the mention of Lucifer. Still a quote, if you're willing to go with the definition of "that came out of Karlheinz's mouth" alone. As a result, there was a MASSIVE surge of people condeming Stockhausen for "celebrating" the 9/11 attacks as a "greatest work of art". Which, natch, isn't what was said (thankfully, there WAS tape of this fiasco!). But it harmed him, and the reporter got the dig in at Stocki that he was apparently looking for. This did get straightened out...eventually...after it resulted in cancellations of concerts of his work in the USA that had been scheduled for 2001/02.
But yeah, I get it...there are definitely reasons to be skeptical of what figures of this sort are "saying", which might NOT actually be what they said! After all, Steve Reich's not the first people to make off the cuff moronic comments like that; I recall Elvis Costello's nasty, alcohol-fueled comment about Ray Charles while EC was on his berserk and bizarre "Armed Forces" N.Am tour. And yes, he caught a raft of crap for that...rightly so...but then, was it Elvis talking or the booze, tour-strain, etc? Eventually, it turned out that those were the culprit, and not Elvis Costello himself. So you have to take what musicians do/say with a grain of salt about the size of a cattle block sometimes. We're a strange lot.