Art is not only about angst.

You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award.

Art is not only about angst.

I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.

What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make.

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.

If you take a violin, you can make it sound 50 different ways. Not just pizzicato and played by the bow, but ponticello, and harmonics, and tremolos. If you take an oboe and play it, there's about one way you can make it sound: like an oboe.