My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.

When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.

This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it.

When I dealt with set theory, I could never make it be the music that I wanted.

Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it.

My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.

The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.