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'd say the differences are more interesting than the similarities at this point. Certainly no one would ever mistake my music for Steve's [ Reich].

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.

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

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

The problem with listening, of course, is that we don't. There's too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it's a constant racket. In the same way we don't see, and in the same way we don't feel, we don't touch, we don't taste.

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.