You can't do anything interesting with cutting-edge technology except not make it cutting-edge.

I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America.

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.

Perhaps when music has been shouting for so long, a quieter voice seems attractive.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when - and he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

It's nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn't think of.