In the end it doesn't matter what you do.

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.

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.

I don't think there is much American music.

I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism.

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

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