I had an ensemble at the time. I would go out and play for three weeks. We would come back from the tour, and we usually had lost money so I had to make money immediately. I put an ad in the paper. My cousin and I ran the company, and I moved furniture for about three or four or five weeks. Then I went on tour again. Again, we lost money.

That went on for years. I thought it was going to go on for the rest of my life, actually. It never occurred to me that I would be able to make a living, really, from writing music. That happened kind of by accident.

I was interested in jobs that were part-time, where I had a lot of independence, where I could work when I wanted to. I wasn’t interested in working in an office where everything would be very regimented…

In those days you could work three days a week, maybe four sometimes, and you could live on that. It was the quickest and easiest way to make an honest living. I thought it was a pretty good deal. I didn’t have to teach any classes anywhere. I just drove the car and I got paid. I liked that. I had my independence, which was very important to me. But also, it didn’t take much time….

When I do concerts I often give talks to students. They get them together, and I talk to them in the afternoon, and we talk about music. Not too long ago one young fellow, he said, “Tell me one thing that I can take away from this talk that I’ll remember and that’s important.” And I said, “No, I’ll give you one word.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “Independence.”…

Well, it meant that I controlled how I spent my time. Being a young dancer, a young painter, a tremendous amount of dedication and work goes into developing the skills to accomplish the artistic goals that you set for yourself. I’ve had friends who’ve gone to law school, and one of them will go and complain about how hard they worked, and I just laugh at them. None of them would consider practicing six or eight hours a day, but that’s quite normal for dancers or musicians or painters. Our workdays tend to be more like eight to 10 hours a day, and we don’t take weekends off, and very few people take off holidays. It’s a very work-intensive environment. But the freedom of working that way seems to be preferable.

Philip Glass to Lola Fadulu, The Atlantic