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

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 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.

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

My operas and my theatre works are very formal pieces.

As one gets older one sees many more paths that could be taken. Artists sense within their own work that kind of swelling of possibilities, which may seem a confusion, or a freedom.

When you start to live outside yourself, it's all dangerous.

Don't worry about your background, whether it's odd or ordinary, use it, build on it.

Simply put, music can heal people.

People don't want to be sold! People want to buy!

Artists are in the imagining/ prototyping business. Society needs people to be out there thinking of what might be. That cannot be something we just delegate to politicians or technologists.

I used to go out with actresses and other female impersonators.

I stick to safe, controlled movement. If it's not safe, I just won't do it.

I think the hero in our generation is not the individual but the pair, two people who together add up to more than they are apart.