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

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.

When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.

Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Don't make music for some vast, unseen audience or market or ratings share or even for something as tangible as money. Though it's crucial to make a living, that shouldn't be your inspiration. Do it for yourself.

Whether I'm doing music or I'm walking down the street or I'm in a record store buying a record or I walk into a comic store and I'm buying comics or having a drink with my friends, it's the same me.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

The kind of music or the kind of arrangements that I do, the kind of musicians I choose, is just what I like to hear.

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody.

I have tried to make the music a bit easier for them to understand.

What makes my approach special is that I do different things. I do jazz, blues, country music and so forth. I do them all, like a good utility man.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

When we started making electronic music I imagined that the reaction we got from the rock musicians must have been similar to the one the beat groups got from people like my dad.