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've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it.

Satyagraha is an opera which I wrote for the Netherlands Opera, so it uses an orchestra of around fifty, a chorus of forty, and there are about seven soloists. The opera ... Satyagraha means truthful, so it was a name [Mahatma] Gandhi used to describe his civil disobedience movement.

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 don't think I'm capable of making radical changes, but over a period of four or five years you can perceive very big changes, and they seem rather small at the time.

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.

Theatrical times are different from concert times, to put it simply. Taking a figure like [Mahatma] Gandhi and setting him on a stage requires thinking about what theater is about and what the whole experience is about and what we're trying to communicate in that way, so you get into certain less abstract considerations.