The main thing the composer needs to do is it needs to remember that the director is there to cheer you on. The director wants you to succeed because if you succeed, you'll be helping the film. And they are truly your conscience. And they're truly your guide.

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.

I'm a geek and I'm a nerd, and I can listen into any piece of music. I think, I can usually tell you what orchestra it was, I can usually tell you what hall it was in. I can tell you, obviously who the conductor was, and who the composer was.

The challenge in scoring a sequel is, how do you not get bored? The only way around that one is to go, "Okay, let's throw everything out that we had before and let's just see it as an autonomous movie, and let's just start again."

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.

The lack of education means, the lack of having something I can pull out of a drawer, means I have to find something in any movie I work on that is intensely personal.

You're going to fail a few times, because that is the only time you actually learn something.