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The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

Any composer who is gloriously conscious that he is a composer must believe that he receives his inspiration from a source higher than himself.

Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.

I consider myself a composer.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

I'm not an intellectual composer.

I just have to take my chances like any other composer.

The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.