I was very fortunate to be at a wealthy institution. I do recognize the drawbacks and limitations of the academic world but it's basically the world I grew up in and there's no way in which I would have been able to survive in the so-called real world.

It's always a thrill for me to see new versions of my pieces on YouTube.

I found myself recycling ideas and I saw that I had to invent reasons to compose a piece rather than start from some exciting idea.

I noticed things in my computer music that were getting old, and I started to figure out that this has to do with the way the listener interacts with music.

I think you'll find a significant number of people who decide not to enter competitions because their music just won't fit in that world.

I was hired for a really excellent academic job early in my life; I was twenty-five when I started at Princeton and I got tenure early on. I really didn't deserve this; I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I wrote a lot of software to do various kinds of special things, and I loved the idea of composing pieces in an electronic studio.