You either are or you're not.

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.

What's clear - and exciting - is that communication for social change is growing.

It is much easier to ride a horse in the direction it is going.

Love is to be cherished because you're lucky to feel it even once in your life.

I like to think of the senses as having a volume control in the brain. The volume turns up on all the other senses when you lose one.

Flowers rejoice when night is done, Lift their heads to greet the sun; Sweetest looks and odours raise, In a silent hymn of praise.

Shakespeare is dangerous to young poets; they cannot but reproduce him, while they fancy that they produce themselves.

We understand why children are afraid of darkness ... but why are men afraid of light?

Wherever there is failure, there is some giddiness, some superstition about luck, some step omitted, which, Nature never pardons.

I wasn't a businesswoman, so I didn't know how to build a career.