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Composers, like authors, have a lot in common. Our main goal is to connect with the listener emotionally.

I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.

Composers are always going back to the past.

I think a composer is always interested in his last work.

The great composers I worked with along the way, I always felt they were filmmakers more than composers. They would talk about the story rather than the music.

I've always been a composer dependent on texts.

I consider myself a composer.

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven.

I feel that I belong to the 19th century. Some composers' music is very topical. It almost says, 'This is about what I read in newspapers yesterday.' Not mine.

It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer's life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer's works.