Writing for film is so different; it's such an act of submission, both on a monetary and time level, because you basically kind of have to just set everything else aside - it's like suddenly getting a temp job that requires you to work 16-hour days. Also just aesthetically, you have to completely leave all of your ego out of it.

I feel as if dystopian and utopian representations are historically the most effective way of criticizing modern society. You know, because you don't have to be factually accurate. You can kind of construct some awesome strawman arguments in your fictional world.

I think the cornerstone for my impetus for doing arrangements for people is because I want to be an enabler. That is to say, I don't approach arrangements with the idea that I want to progressive the genre of arranging. I want to be more of an enabler, and if a person is making a record and they have the option of layering some real instruments down on a track and I can be of assistance whether it is brass or winds or stings or percussion then I do so. Sometimes I do take on projects because it is a pretty sweet deal to work with Pet Shop boys, you know?

I ended up writing songs by taking stock of all the different events in my life, but all those songs were bad.

I've always identified people's taste in music as being kind of hetero and/or homo - there's music people like because they feel like they have aesthetic similarity to it and the music they wish to create, and then there's music that represents the other, that they listen to because it represents an escape from the music that they have to make.

I feel like people who actually know how music works on a technical level need to explain it to the rest of us a little more often.

Discipline is not just about work, but about diet and about exercise and on a deeper level, about concentrating and making sure that my brain is staying in good places and the neurons are firing in positive ways as opposed to getting into anxiety, panic-attack states of mind. When I'm crazy. You know?