To some extent, I’m mildly surprised by every new piece, by the precise path that my interest takes.

I find composition difficult. I never thought of myself as someone who can crank it out. I can’t crank it out – I have to dig it out the hard way. In some sense, you become more confident in your technical apparatus, but it becomes harder to do something you haven‘t done already.

Yehudi Wyner has reinvented for himself a Romanticism that somehow manages to seem like a step forward rather than a step back.

Pulitzers are journalist-oriented, so the publicity machine kicks in for about two days. Then, you go back to normal.

The only way for me to compose is intensively. To pick at it over a long period doesn’t seem to work.

I think a great piece, whenever it was written, gets under our skin, makes us feel something. That’s what Beethoven was trying to do.

The general direction seems to be becoming fairly clear to me, but every new piece is a small adventure.

My own personal melting pot has no room for Hendrix or heavy metal, filled as it is with European ancestors such as Debussy, Sibelius, Bartok, Lutoslawski, and Ligeti.

I want to know exactly how the first few measures are going to go, and the rough shape of a movement or the whole piece and its essential character.

I have a tendency to postpone starting a piece until it’s kicked around in my head a little bit.

It’s not possible to build a piece that stands successfully without talking about its shape. But if you talk too much, you lead people away from the music itself.

I’m trying to do the exact thing Verdi or Mendelssohn did – open up that spiritual space where we can all be fully ourselves.