In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to historical precedent.

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.

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

We are floating with the stream of time like a bubble with a stream of water.

Any event once it has occurred can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.

Success is a journey not a destination.

It's easy to be generous with money. Far harder to be generous with your time.

We are all members of the same great family ... On social occasions the formality of strictly military occasions should be relaxed, and a spirit of friendliness and goodwill should prevail.

I have always believed that life is too short for rows and disagreements. Even if I think I'm right, I would prefer to apologize and remain friends rather than win and be an enemy.

Happiness is the summit of a high mountain; we can visit it, but we can't stay there! We are forced to go down to the valleys of sadness.

I thank all missionaries, men and women who quietly work hard for the Lord and their brothers and sisters.

For what I give, not what I take, For battle, not for victory, My prayer of thanks I make.

In my opinion, there's no condition in life that can't be ameliorated by a dose of junk food.