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.

So the real drama for me is balancing live performances and writing, and one of the ways I balance it is I write in hotel rooms. That's not exactly balancing. Actually, writing in hotel rooms means that I'm refusing to deal with the problem.

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.

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.

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

The generation of composers that are just preceded me, people like [Karlheinz] Stockhausen, [Pierre] Boulez, and, well, [John] Cage for that matter,[Morton] Feldman ... That was a kind of experimental music that was very isolated. It had no real public.

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.