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

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor.

No, I think that a person writes a poem because they have an inner urge of something that they want to express, and I think it's that inner urge that you want to express when you write a piece of music.

We can use techniques in modifying things, in controlling things, but the first impulse has to be something that you simply cannot make just out of technique, or else it becomes perfectly evident that it is nothing but technique that you're exercising.

I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very complicated, there's really a push to the world to try to figure out what it was that he was hearing.

By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There’s no specific line, as you know.