I didn't have a record player.

The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude.

I didn't have a record player.

I wrote music as soon as I knew notation.

It's the irrational things that interest me.

I don't have ideas so much as there are things which constantly evolve... there are various threads or layers, if you like, which change.

Minimalism now is a reaction to what came before. It's absolutely of its time. Music moved into the set theory thing, and moved out of it.

The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles.

This sounds horribly pretentious, but I like to think that if music hadn't existed, I could have invented it.

When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18.

I don't think there is much American music.

Music is such a problem in the time it takes.

One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.

I always write the pieces I want to write.

I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism.

I'm not an architectural composer.

My operas usually come from musical ideas rather than ideas about subject matter.

I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music.

People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.

The piece that had a large influence on me was Turangalila.

My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!

When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.

When I dealt with set theory, I could never make it be the music that I wanted.

My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.

I think there are influences that you open the door to, and influences that come under the door.

The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

You either are or you're not.

There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes.

In the end it doesn't matter what you do.

I love my red hair. It makes me spunkier.

I almost chose the career of an ethnomusicologist because I was so fascinated by that music. It gives a different feeling of time.

But I do know people that have stalkers and it's not nice.

My position on Speedos changes depending on the country that I'm in. If you're in Europe, it's definitely acceptable.

I will keep on loving you until eternity comes to make me love you more.

I'm about to play an emaciated pregnant vampire, so I've stopped using as much butter as Paula Deen - just until 'Breaking Dawn' is over.

We are like violins. We can be used as doorstops, or we can make music.

'Instructions Not Included' is proving that there is a huge Latin market that needs a special project. They love seeing their own people; they want to see themselves onscreen. In my case, I know them pretty well. I know what they laugh at. I think it's going to open a lot of doors, this movie.

In order to achieve anything you must be brave enough to fail.

To heal illness, begin by restoring balance.

Dad worked in a warehouse when I was little and I didn't see him for three years as he was doing all the overtime God gave him to buy me new ballet shoes, or a new tutu.

No matter what you achieve, what you want to aspire to be, or how famous and powerful you become, the most important thing is whether you are excited about each and every moment of your life because of your work and people around you.

It's good to be finally able to afford food for a change. It's good to move on from potatoes and tin soup.

I do not question the power of our weapons and the efficiency of our logistics; I cannot say these things delight me as the y seem to delight some of our officials, but they are certainly impressive.

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!

The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception.

The other was the best recovered in his condition; and being now pretty well, was appointed nurse to the rest of the sick. Next to oranges, I thought the cyder had the best effects.

Some people would ask: 'You are not the one who does the painting, or shot the work, how can it be your work?' But I was the one who chose which site we should use, and which assistant helps me to do the painting, or the shot.

We feel closer to the drawings on the walls of Chauvet than the painting of, say, an Egyptian mural. These artists are not remote ancestors; they are brothers. They saw like us; they drew like us. We wear essentially the same clothes against the cold.

I do think there is this danger that our society has made its peace with decline. I'd like to jolt them out of their complacency a little bit.