I just scribbled away and eventually a C-major chord was there. I didn't ever decide I was going to be a composer. It was like being tall. It's what I was. It's what I did.

I was a catastrophe at Science and Games, but the good thing about Quaker schools is that they encourage you in those subjects for which you show an aptitude.

I am proud to be able to claim that, from the age of nineteen, I've managed to earna living entirely as a composer.

When I came across something I liked, I wanted to find out as much as I could about it. This was as true of hearing Hoagy Carmichael for the first time as it was later when I first heard Boulez.

I realized very early that I was never going to make by living by writing string quartets. But I wanted to write music and I didn't want to have to do anything else.

I hated teaching composition. I was playing music I didn't particularly want to play, being on committees I didn't want to be on.

Being on a musical quest was something I always enjoyed.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

I wanted to write music, and cook, and play cards, and have a nice time.

I do not take advice from people who are 100 percent sure. I take advice from those that believe they are as close to sure as possible, but understand they could be completely wrong.

You can't be a crazy rebel in the face of death, it's not a fitting attitude.

Economics, as it has emerged, can be made more productive by paying greater and more explicit attention to the ethical considerations that shape human behaviour and judgment.

It's true that I am not from the south and I have a certain reserve. I take time to get close to, and I don't immediately throw my arms round someone. But it is more a question of style.

We were so shocked by how fast that war went that President Bush did not have a plan, a peace plan.

Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.

Now, and in the future, my focus is entirely on pets and children. Im not a person who can turn a blind eye to injustice against them.

I'd like to see women get on to boards and run companies despite the fact that men occupy the citadels of power.

God Himself allows certain faults; and often we say, "I have deserved to err; I have deserved to be ignorant.

I have a pro tools rig that I carry in my backpack.