When you build a building, you finish a building. You don't finish a garden; you start it, and then it carries on with its life. So my analogy was really to say that we composers or some of us should think of ourselves as people who start processes rather than finish them. And there might be surprises.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one's furniture.

Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.

The whole point of art, as far as I’m concerned, is that art doesn’t make any difference. And that’s why it’s important. Take film: you can have quite extreme emotional experiences watching a movie, but they stop as soon as you walk out of the cinema. You can see people being hurt, but even though you feel those things strongly, you know they’re not real.

I love good, loud speakers.

Cultural objects have no notable identity outside of that which we confer upon them. Their value is entirely a product of the interaction that we have with them.

Look closely at the most embarrassing details, and amplify them.