I'm really interested in writing a piece of music that will move you, that will really move you. That is really the only reason that I'm writing music.

You write it down because finally, when it's written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

Now, there are sometimes making a connection between one section and another that sometimes you do want to see the pattern because it helps you to lead into the next thing - it's a rhetorical thing, where you just see how the pattern has to go into the next thing.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

Besides merely some pleasure that we get out of the combinations of pitches together and lines, I think that there is some satisfaction that we get in the fact of having this diffuse thing organized very concretely and put onto a frame and have it actually decided.