Peter Maxwell Davies

“I think the great thing about music is that it's timeless. You can have a piece of music from 500 years ago and it can be just as fresh and relevant today as it was when it was first written.”

“Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

“Perhaps it is our Northern temperament that furnishes us with an inbuilt resistance to the blandishments of the commercial world.”

“I live in a landscape, which every single day of my life is enriching.”

“My musical language is a personal one, but I don't think it's so personal that it is not accessible.”

“I believe that music is a moral force.”

“It is essential to have a dream, a vision, and to be able to communicate that. The problem with many arts organisations is that they don't have that sense of vision.”