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

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.

The multiplicity of ideas is what I'm interested in.

Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.

Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all.

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

While a lab Director can get done the things that he regards as important, he has the more important job of bringing out the best ideas of the broader scientific community.

I think a good MP is someone who cares for their community and becomes their champion, which is why I will make my home in any seat I am lucky enough to be selected for. Looks play no part in the equation, what matters is your ideas and connecting them to the electorate.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

I do not 'get' ideas; ideas get me.

The new generation of Labour is different. Different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.

Another principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather around some human form in which are incarnated the living thoughts and ideas of the passing age.

Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact.

But in a broader sense, when I have more control, I want to expose people to new ideas.

We finally found out the technique of separating and getting information about where every train would be at any moment. Of course, I went over budget many times, because - as you go along - some things improved, and you get better ideas.

It is important to nurture any new ideas and initiatives which can make a difference for Africa.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

I think I am too interested in my own ideas to copy anyone else's, but I find that other people's imagery, the flow of language in the outside world, games with words, and ideas about relationships are all most important to me.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.