There's almost no content in terms of language at all. I don't like using language to convey meaning. I'd rather use images and music.

I like the idea that [Mahatma] Gandhi is appearing now in an opera hall in all these different places, and people kind of think about it again.

I'd say the differences are more interesting than the similarities at this point. Certainly no one would ever mistake my music for Steve's [ Reich].

I was a regular kind of academic music student. I was at Juilliard. I had to study all the contemporary music of the time, and changing that language very radically was just a sign or a signal that I was going to try to do something very different. I find that that's what I feel closest to. I found no real inner response in me in a non-tonal language.

The hardest thing about traveling is that mostly you get to a point - and it always happens on every tour - where you can choose between eating and sleeping, but you can't do both.

If you don't have a basis on which to make the choice, then you don't have a style at all. You have a series of accidents.

A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.