As the seconds of our lives are ticking away, you have to realize that life needs to be an adventure.
I want to go and write music that announces to you that you can feel something. I don’t want to tell you what to feel, but I just want you to have the possibility of feeling something.
If you talk to any director, they'll say music is fifty percent of the movie.
If I play you a piece of music, that's when you can truly look inside me.
A good score should have a point of view all of its own. It should transcend all that has gone before, stand on its own two feet and still serve the movie. A great soundtrack is all about communicating with the audience, but we all try to bring something extra to the movie that is not entirely evident on screen.
You're going to fail a few times, because that is the only time you actually learn something.
I've spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn't reach the heart.
Get rid of the shitty sound. Life's too short.
Never let your wife prevent you from buying equipment. A car will not buy a synthesizer, but a synthesizer can buy a car.
I think one of the things which always is forgotten in music class, is the first thing you have to do as a musician is you have to learn how to listen.
Why get up in the morning unless you’re going to have an adventure?
The rules are: The more playful we get, the more we can get rid of the rules.
The thing that hasn't changed, and I don't think will ever change, is that the operative word in music is "play." You have to have a playfulness about it. As the world shifts, it's starting to understand more and more that to have a playfulness about any and everything is actually the way of having a better life, or being more creative, or being more productive.
There's a power that movies and music has, that can move you and motivate you to look at your neighbor in a slightly more respectful way, and look at cultures in a more inclusive way.
Inspired music arises from an inspired movie which arises from an inspired script.
I've never had a real job in my life. I didn't learn anything, I was terrible at school. It was just this thing. Music was all I wanted to do.
If something happened where I couldnt write music anymore, it would kill me. Its not just a job. Its not just a hobby. Its why I get up in the morning.
What are you going to do when you are not saving the world.
You always hear these stories of how Hollywood is so merciless on composers and how they all get beaten up. Nobody beats me up as much as I beat myself up. This is what I love doing and I have one life to do it in, and I better do it right. I better do it well.
Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.
I wake up around noon, light a cigarette, get a cup of coffee, sit in the bathtub for an hour and daydream, and I usually come up with some ideas... It's a very irresponsible life. The only decisions I make are about the notes I'm writing.
I grew up in a house full of music, and a house that didn't have a television. We had a piano, but no television. And really, I very quickly realized that this was, you know, there was magic there, there was magic to be had, you could lose yourself in it, it was a refuge, it was joy, it was all of those things.
You can only make a good noise on the guitar if you're committed. Little careful noise doesn't work. You have to be bold.
I've spent my life trying to make things simpler.
All music is based in one way or the other, or influenced through the ages, on technology.
