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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mum used to say we were the same soul split in two and walking around on four legs. It seems unnatural being born together and then dying apart.

There is a sound that comes from gospel music that doesn't come from anything else. It is a sound of peace. It is a sound of, 'I'm going to make it through all of this.'

Willow trees are kind, Dear God. They will not bear a body on their limbs.

The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

If I can find something that I haven't done before, then that is an immediate...it peaks my interest.

Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it's much the same.

So this was fame at last! Nothing but a vast debt to be paid to the world in energy, blood, and time.

I started dealing with weapons on the first show I ever did, 'The Inside,' but I didn't really do any physical stuff until 'Alias.'

The Bible offers three metaphors that teach us God's view of life: Life is a test, life is a trust, and life is a temporary assignment.

For each film, you try to create a whole world sonically, having a sense of identity through instruments used, or recording techniques.