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.

What I've noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer.

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

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.

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.

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