In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with..

Satyagraha is an opera which I wrote for the Netherlands Opera, so it uses an orchestra of around fifty, a chorus of forty, and there are about seven….

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 peo….

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 conversat….

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 l….

I'd say the differences are more interesting than the similarities at this point. Certainly no one would ever mistake my music for Steve's [ Reich]..

You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That’s the only secret..

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..

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..

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'….

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 ….

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..

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..

I like the idea that [Mahatma] Gandhi is appearing now in an opera hall in all these different places, and people kind of think about it again..

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 c….

If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely..

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 don't know what I'm doing and it's the not knowing that makes it interesting..

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music..

I think I'm really part of a whole generational movement in a way. I think a lot of other people since and during this time have gotten interested in….