Harrison Birtwistle

"My attitude to writing is like when you do wallpapering, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet. And then your friends say: It's terrific!"

"The theatre only knows what it's doing next week, not like the opera, where they say: What are we going to do in five years' time? A completely different attitude."

"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."

"When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11."