I don't know what I'm doing and it's the not knowing that makes it interesting.
The problem with listening, of course, is that we don't. There's too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it's a constant racket. In the same way we don't see, and in the same way we don't feel, we don't touch, we don't taste.
You practice and you get better. It's very simple.
A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.
What you hear depends on how you focus your ear. We're not talking about inventing a new language, but rather inventing new perceptions of existing languages.
You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That’s the only secret.
The work I've done is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing.
What I've noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer.
There's almost no content in terms of language at all. I don't like using language to convey meaning. I'd rather use images and music.
If you don't have a basis on which to make the choice, then you don't have a style at all. You have a series of accidents.
I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it.
It doesn't need to be imagined, it needs to be written down.
Finally, ultimately, you write music for yourself. I mean, I need a public, I need people to play, I need everything else. I'm not working in isolation. But finally the man that writes the music is alone. And I have to respond to those criteria which are almost like inner needs or inner responses.
If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely.
What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music.
I always knew what I wanted to do and I did it.
I travel the world, and I'm happy to say that America is still the great melting pot - maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean.
Traditions are imploding and exploding everywhere - everything is coming together, for better or worse, and we can no longer pretend were all living in different worlds because were on different continents.
In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with.
I'm interested in what happens to music when other people use it. Whereas there are composers who don't like anyone to touch their music, I think people should because they do things I can't think of.
I shift between mediums very frequently. Instead of taking a break from writing, I just write in a different medium or in a different way or for a different purpose, so that I don't actually stop writing - I just go to something else. Like going from a big symphony to a piano piece is great and very refreshing, I find. And then going from that to a big concerto, and then having to go out and play.
My biggest problem about writing is whenever I write piano pieces, because I then have to learn to play them, which is sometimes not so easy.
I think it's a great handicap to be discovered at an early age. I didn't have that burden of early success. I had the much more livable and durable career where success comes late, and comes slowly, and you ease into it. So by the time it comes, you're ready to deal with it.
But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say.
Akhnaten is kind of a dark, kind of mysterious character. We don't know a lot about him - a lot of information on him was lost. But he obviously was a kind of iconoclast of him time. I guess I'm attracted to people like that. Like [Albert] Einstein also, who radically changed our way of thinking about the world we live in.
