I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.

Composition is interesting because, in a sense, you always have to let it go. Unless you're a true composer/performer, you're always sending a PDF and then someone else makes it. It's like instructions for a short story, faxed to every English student who's studying it.

My urge, when I go to the store, is to buy everything. And it's the same when I'm composing. My first instinct is basically to bring the whole store home, and not make a decision about how things play out.

For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

As a composer you want to tell musicians two completely contradictory things. You want to say, "Play exactly what I wrote, but bring your own thing to it." In a lot of ways they feel like opposites, but in a sense, my job is to cajole or encourage decisions that I approve of.

I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.

Because I had been in conservatory for so long, I was jealous of my friends in bands.