You have to remain flexible, and you must be your own critic at all times.

I have to give credit to Giorgio Moroder ; among the first to make us realize the importance of music in film.

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.

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.

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've spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn't reach the heart.

I don't drive, so one of my assistants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wall telling me how much time I have left, and how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work on. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you're not thinking about it.