Even if you're a genius and you invent your own language, it doesn't become a language until there are people using it.

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 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.

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

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

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."

When you sit with people and you can hear what they're hearing, that's quite interesting.