I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific'.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

It's one of nature's way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.

My music is best understood by children and animals.