Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.

Naturally enough, I couldn't have foreseen the vast sea change which has come upon that scene as a result of German reunification and associated events.

The past nine years in San Diego have represented such a period of questioning.

In any case, the fewer boundaries that exist hindering free movement between all forms of articulate human cognition, the better.

The idea of 'machine assemblage' is, especially, very alien to my sensibility, since it suggests a relative indifference of the strata to one another during the process of construction.

What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?

The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.

In my model, important interference phenomena arise when individual strata come into contact. These chaotic fluctuations are, I suppose, what my music is really about.

It is still true that it is easier to compose a poem in the form of a manual for adjusting a VCR than it is to write a piece using just tuning as a symphony.

There would seem to be a limit, even for an art preoccupied with boundaries and transgressions, beyond which a work reaches its breaking point and becomes an actual failure, a mere experimentation.

I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That's how things sometimes go.

Look in the mirror and say, 'There is none other like you and for that reason alone you are beautiful.

You are going to find that buying the car is much less satisfying than working for it.

The jar of oil is sacred anointing

I think for any small business that's bootstrapped, the overwhelming challenge initially is getting to positive cash flow.

In my old age I've come to find that if you respect other people, you feel better about yourself.

War is usually fought over diminishing resources, particulary those that we perceive to be extremely valuable.

The charms of seclusion are seldom combined with the conveniences of civilization.

A good jockey doesn't need orders and a bad jockey couldn't carry them out anyway; so it's best not to give them any.

Glory is a heavy burden, a murdering poison, and to bear it is an art. And to have that art is rare.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.