Sometimes one can be so closely involved with things that the larger context is lost to view.

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.

I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that - the ghosts you chase you never catch.

We love those to whom we can tell our story.

Near the land of the convertible moon

You just can’t live in Texas/if you don’t have a lot of soul.

Music is part of the tantra, the dance of life. Before your eyes, before your awareness, is the procession of eternity.

I think when your image becomes so big that it's hard for a viewer to see a character, then I think you're in danger as an actor of being unable to perform what you should be doing.

We are educating people out of their creative capacities.

I don't write on topics that require a lot of urgency. But in 'Stiff,' I wanted to change people's hearts about organ donation. Whenever I get a chance, I try to talk about that.

I have mugs of hot water every morning because the studio is cold, and also because it makes my throat sound clearer.

Forever used to feel like a curse. Now it feels like a promise.