I'm a guitarist by background. That's what I used to do for sessions when I was younger and that sort of thing. We have several pianos in the house and I tend to just sit and fiddle around.

A lot of the music editing job is communication and working out what a director really wants the music to be.

I worry about technical details - did I mix the cello half a decibel too high? Things like that.

I like taking my leads from what I see rather than trying to impose. I like that way of looking at things and seeing what's on screen and seeing how I can draw music out of it almost.

In the mid-2000s, I kind of accidentally became a music editor.

I like expansive stuff that has a lot of space in it, like some of the early Pink Floyd albums.

It's a funny thing with the inspiration thing. There's always loads of music around that I absolutely love and films going back to when I started making film music in the mid-80's.

I tend to work in layers. There's a huge orchestra in the film, but I also record a lot things with very intimate groups, and I like to be able to use the textures of those intimate groups.

For me, I work very self-contained. It's literally just me sitting in a room doing it until the very end of the process when other musicians come in and instruments are recorded.

I think after everything in the whole process of filmmaking, temp scores are great if you use them for what they're good for, if you use them for that early stage of support for things.

A lot of composers I know hate temp scores because people get attached to them.

Find your hidden talents, your hidden potentials, your hidden purposes and convert them into a better business for the benefit of the entire world.

Taste is the feminine of genius.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

In fact, I think new media is going to make a big difference with injecting more people of color into Hollywood and non-Hollywood.

Not one change of species into another is on record ... we cannot prove that a single species has been changed.

True, the movement for woman's rights has broken many old fetters, but it has also forged new ones.

He who knows himself to be profound endeavors to be clear; he who would like to appear profound to the crowd endeavors to be obscure.

Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment.

As much as thinking this upsets me, I'm starting to see that I need the merry-go-round much more than it needs me, and in the end my choice is to hop back on or get left in the dust.