Every couple weeks I'll listen to Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, just to check in, to see how it's doing. It's doing OK.

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

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

I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone. People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.

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

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

In really fancy restaurants they never point to the bathroom, they just gesture toward the bathroom or they'll lead you to the bathroom. The fancier the restaurant, the less pointing there is.

Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality.

I'm pretty clear about what I'm capable of doing.

Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad.

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.

No work for grace. It can only be received through faith in Jesus Christ.

Never give up. Dare to Dream. Dare to believe.

That tingle in the brain is called a word.It bats itself against its fleshy bounds.

I did so want to hear a singer. I miss the sound of a woman's voice, the way they look and smell.

Worry is common, it's not good for us, it accomplishes little, and it dishonors the God who cares for us. Worry may be our most enduring form of unbelief.

A conviction borne of God amply possesses the potency and power to brazenly reach beyond the possible in order to topple the impossible.

A poet must have died as a man before he is worth anything as a poet.

Nobody really knows whether they are a poet. I knew I was interested from the age of 15.

His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about.

Is it possible to live so defensively that you never get to live at all?