The French Revolution is the ultimate modernist statement. Destroy everything. Don't build on the past. There is no past.

Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.

What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make.

I find respect for a mediocre British composer, as opposed to a really good American, ridiculous because they automatically respect a composer if he's from England.

The structural thinking I use in the concert hall is unnecessary to most film projects, and most film composers make better use of the enormous range of pop and other materials and techniques required of them than I probably would, faced with the same challenge.