It takes about a year to write an opera for me, but not a really a year of writing. I'm touring at the same time, and I'm playing, sometimes doing smaller projects.[The opera] Akhnaten fits in with Gandhi and Einstein, so that forms a trilogy in a way.I picked people who were these kind of larger than life characters, who kind of changed the world they lived in by almost the force of their personality and their inventiveness. People that I think not only do I admire but I think they're admirable people.

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.

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.

I don't know that I make a big distinction between the big pieces and the little pieces, because I don't experience them in that way. I mean, by the same token, you're out touring with a band and then you're writing string quartets, and in a funny way, isn't it all the same, in a way? It's all just music.

You practice and you get better. It's very simple.

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

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