I'm still disturbed if a chord isn't together, but your priorities change as you get older.

I'm trying to conduct only five months a year, and the rest will be composing time. I'm trying to spend as much as I can out of those months here in L.A., because for creative work, this is a fantastic place.

Anyone who composes and conducts at the same time is immediately suspect, because he must be faking one or the other.

If I were in a position to announce a public competition to coin a new word, I would do so right now.

Of course, if you think of a European or American household in the '50s, so what were the things that when people started climbing up the ladder, what did they buy? A fridge, a TV, I think piano was the number three item in say '53 or '54.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.