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.

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.

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

Truth never dies.

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.

Men are prostrated by misfortune; women bend, but do not break, and martyr-like live on.

There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo.

Why can’t I drink the potion instead?” asked Harry desperately. “Because I am much older, much cleverer, and much less valuable,” said Dumbledore.

Why don't we just get our population healthier so we don't need medical care?

As psychotic as it gets outside, the comic can be more psychotic.

Great occasions for serving God come seldom, but little ones surround us daily.

Big fires flare up in a wind, but little ones are blown out unless they are carried in under cover.

God hears no more than the heart speaks; and if the heart be dumb, God will certainly be deaf.