As a composer you want to tell musicians two completely contradictory things. You want to say, Play exactly what I wrote, but bring your own thing to it. In a lot of ways they feel like opposites, but in a sense, my job is to cajole or encourage decisions that I approve of.

I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.

Even more than in the concert hall, in church there are things you can and cannot do, just out of respect. You would never have the sound of someone being nailed to a cross, or the sound of a child being born, because everybody knows the story. We know that we're meant to feel a complicated raft of things.

My urge, when I go to the store, is to buy everything. And it's the same when I'm composing. My first instinct is basically to bring the whole store home, and not make a decision about how things play out.

I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.

I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone. People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.

Because I had been in conservatory for so long, I was jealous of my friends in bands.