You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That’s the only secret.

Finally, ultimately, you write music for yourself. I mean, I need a public, I need people to play, I need everything else. I'm not working in isolation. But finally the man that writes the music is alone. And I have to respond to those criteria which are almost like inner needs or inner responses.

My biggest problem about writing is whenever I write piano pieces, because I then have to learn to play them, which is sometimes not so easy.

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 always knew what I wanted to do and I did it.

I've been working in theater, really, since about 1965. I started working with the Mabou Mines about then, and in a way I've always worked in the theater, but it's never been a main part of my work. And it wasn't until Einstein that I kind of shifted into high gear with theater, working with Bob, with Bob Wilson. And since then I find it a very attractive form to work in. It's just an extension of my work.

In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with.