Our industry [classic music] has kind of retarded into this kind of endless cover-producing thing, and it's a pity.

Music has just as much to do with movement and body as it does soul and intellect.

As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign.

There is something very special about this part of the world [U.S], which is the openness and the curiosity and the lack of prejudice and the lack of generally accepted norms as to what art should be and how an artist's career should go and all that.

Classic music somehow changed, and it changed between the first and the second world wars, and somehow what happened was that the hero that had been the composer, the hero now was the performer, and especially the conductor.

The Royal Festival Hall in London is nice; people hang out there. I think this inviting, non-exclusive character is very important.

I think if you would like to describe composing as an act with one word, "slow" would be the word.