“One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic thin...” — Harrison Birtwistle Quote

One thing I've tried to do in writing music is take on very basic things, very archetypal things.

I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music.

The thing about influence is that any composer worth anything will give you the same names.

When I dealt with set theory, I could never make it be the music that I wanted.

There are rhythmic ideas which sometimes only work up to a point. In writing there are moments when it just comes off the page, it's not just a collection of notes.

The Internet has become a remarkable fount of economic and social innovation largely because it's been an archetypal level playing field, on which even sites with little or no money behind them - blogs, say, or Wikipedia - can become influential.

We see things in this material world, wherein our bodies dwell, only because our mind through its attention lives in another world, only because it contemplates the beauties of the archetypal and intelligible world which Reason contains.

The story of Noah, like other stories in the first 11 chapters of Genesis, are archetypal. Noah's story tells us that human beings have an inherent tendency towards violence both towards their fellow human beings and towards the creation itself. The story tells us that this violence grieves God.

I am not the archetypal leading man. This is mainly for one reason: as you may have noticed, I have no hair.