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

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.

My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!

I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music.

The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles.

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.

One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.