The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

I think music has gone through a period of something very severe, rather radical, rather the way painting did with cubism.

I didn't have a record player.

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.

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.

The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles.

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.

Music is such a problem in the time it takes.

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.

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.

My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.

Follow your heart. Then root its longing with the facts.

Know your capacities and continually improve upon them.

There is nothing I can't live without. I learned this attitude when I was a child.

I thought, I loved Batman, I loved Spider-Man, I love all these characters, but Catwoman is really different from any other one.

Do things that matter, things that will make those better, and things that will make you better.

I prefer the emotion that corrects the rule.

Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.

Because the fundamental human problem is that people are afraid of change.

I can't even plan tomorrow.

Although the last, not least.