I’m a terrible singer, but it helps when I have to call a taxi.

I see only adaptations – not revolutions.

Ive managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me – music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. Its all about ideas.

I’ve had every advantage in the world, despite the 18 years of silence which were nobody’s fault but mine.

I personally do not write highbrow music. If I do, it’s by accident.

There is no change – I’m as deep or as shallow as I ever was. What’s new is on-the-job experience. This is what you gain with years.

If you have more money than you need, you have to give it away. It’s a duty. I get to choose whom to sponsor, and I like to give to the areas that I know something about.

When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989, my first piano teacher sent me something that I’d composed when I was four. I remember I played it, and it still sounded like me. I’m the same composer I was then.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson’s poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

I don’t think events in your life affect your music.