What's the point of getting up in the morning unless you're gonna have an adventure? As the moments of our life are ticking away you have to be aware that it needs to be an adventure

If you talk to any director, they'll say music is fifty percent of the movie.

Never let your wife prevent you from buying equipment. A car will not buy a synthesizer, but a synthesizer can buy a car.

I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King I wrote over four hours worth of tunes, and they were really pretty -but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted.

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.

Why get up in the morning unless you’re going to have an adventure?

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.