With chamber music you can get people who work on the music for months, rehearsing it every day for a couple of hours, and if they get it in a different way than you do, which is entirely possible, it's not as a result of anything other than their good musicianship.

I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone. People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

In really fancy restaurants they never point to the bathroom, they just gesture toward the bathroom or they'll lead you to the bathroom. The fancier the restaurant, the less pointing there is.

Because I had been in conservatory for so long, I was jealous of my friends in bands.

I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.

Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad.