I think I'm really part of a whole generational movement in a way. I think a lot of other people since and during this time have gotten interested in writing what we can still call experimental music. It's not commercial music. And it's really a concert music, but a concert music for our time. And wanting to find the audience, because we've discovered the audience is really there. Those became really clear with Einstein on the Beach.

I'm interested in what happens to music when other people use it. Whereas there are composers who don't like anyone to touch their music, I think people should because they do things I can't think of.

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.

The work I've done is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing.

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.

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.