Don't believe everything you see on VH1.

That whole thing of replicating what others do is a siren call. The sirens lure you to the rocks of unoriginality.

Music has an immediate effect. If you want to go beyond that and look underneath, film is a good way of explaining.

In a film score, the last thing you want to do is take people out of the movie. The music is secondary. In opera, the music is the main event.

I'd rather duplicate it myself. Another of our favourite techniques.

I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited.

The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer's vision.