When I was a kid, I wrote music - from the age of 11 until the age of 18.

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.

At that moment I knew without a doubt that God himself was speaking to me. He cared. He was there. He came to help even when I could not call out loud or explain my fear in words.

There are no illegitimate children - only illegitimate parents.

The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.

I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

love is that burning fire which devours everything and shall never, never cease in all the endless ages to come.

I do not believe in the commercial possibility of induced radioactivity.

My last name may have opened doors, but I have to keep them open.

Drink! for you know not when you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

Virtue and vice, evil and good, are siblings, or next-door neighbors, Easy to make mistakes, hard to tell them apart.

I wonder much that a court of Law should be in doubt whether a Resolution of Congress can superceed the Law of a Sovereign State.