William Bolcom quotes:

I would find myself, not necessarily always assigning these little bits of music for here or there, but all of a sudden something would fall into place and it would be exactly that.

Now the big question is if you are going to go to all the trouble of setting an opera and making all that music and so on, there's got to be some aspect that you can do in an opera that really makes it worth while.

I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life.

Once I know what the first page is, then the rest will come.

There's got to be something that you can do that will not just be a nice honor to the play, or the book, or the movie you're dealing with, but some aspect that maybe can explore something that the play couldn't do.