Another way of working is setting deliberate constraints that aren't musical ones - like saying, "Well, this piece is going to be three minutes and nineteen seconds long and it's going to have changes here, here and here, and there's going to be a convolution of events here, and there's going to be a very fast rhythm here with a very slow moving part over the top of it." Those are the sort of visual ideas that I can draw out on graph paper. I've done a lot of film music this way.

If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don't know that I'm doing it, usually.

Try to make things that can become better in other people’s minds than they were in yours.

Often, I think you find that you're enjoying certain things, you've got this new way of listening, and you find that you really enjoy the way that sounds on it and the way this other thing sounds on it and the way that other thing sounds on it. So, you're finding a new pleasure that you didn't know about before.

I do sometimes look back at things I've written in the past, and think, 'I just don't remember being the person who wrote that.'

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It's still got the same strings on it.