My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.

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 prefer theatre but TV keeps you well known.

At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design.

Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that.

The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.

By obtaining a sense of its place in the unfolding drama of life, set in an ecological theatre, so we can understand why it has become one of the leading players.

Many of the Universities have very good Theatre Departments these days.

For the theatre one needs long arms... an artiste with short arms can never make a fine gesture.

Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

I think theatre should always be somewhat suspect.

It's great to be in a film that's able to have people really want to become socially conscious, to walk out of the theatre and want to do something.

When the cinematograph first made its appearance, we were told that the days of the ordinary theatre were numbered.

But I think theatre in a repressive society is an immensely exciting event and theatre in a luxurious old, affluent old society like ours is an entertaining event.

The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.

I would have started the National Actors Theatre 30 years earlier.

I've been doing theatre since I was 5 years old.

I was on a founding members of the Canadian theatre movement in the late 60's till the mid 70's and performed theatre from Halifax to Vancouver and all places in between.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

This is a group effort. This is group theatre. This is no big star turn. You could do things with it to do that but it would just be out of kilter. This is one reason I like this play. This is a unit.

I feel that David took a risk with me. I have a sense that by starting off in the theatre and going off to do films you are seen to sell out in some way. I don't hold truck with that, but you can't stop people from feeling it.

Early British pop was helped tremendously by the writing of Bob Dylan who had proved you could write about political and quite controversial subjects. Certainly what we did followed on from what was happening with the angry young men in the theatre.