Who approaches collaboration with agenda in terms of content? The agenda is only in terms of process, which is generosity, listening, careful thinking.

I love the pleasure of finding the same truth in two different places. It has a lot to do with a soul.

There is some music that's truly dark, in that it's dark in terms of hopeless. But then again, the act of hope is just making the work of art.

I believe that music should be grown on trees, to be plucked like a fruit without the extravagance of harvest.

I don't like to treat words and sounds like objects. You have to penetrate deeply into their meaning.

I love the appropriateness of making a dogmatic statement. I support that, but that is a different level of the individual consciousness than was the source of our music.

In a way, composing on the melodic level is an expression of a melodic truth, almost like a geometric truth. If it has clarity, other people will recognize it. There's no way of isolating it in a gallery on a white wall and saying, "This is a work of art. This is a mathematical proof."