Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

I don't dare postulate about science, but I know that it takes both emotion and intellect in order for art to happen.

My students frequently ask what their next project should be. My advice: immerse yourself in the music you love and you will find what you want to do; you will discover your next project.

That is why the analogy of stealing does not work. With a thief, we want to know how much money he or she stole, and from whom? With the artist it is not how much he or she took from whom, but what the artist did with it.

If one uses music that one does not really love, then one will not succeed in making it one's own.

To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together.

The fact that Stravinsky used the classics as a major influence is obvious. What is interesting is how he used them, how he turned Bach into Stravinsky.