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.

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.

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.

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.

No knowledge can summarize humans in one premise.

There are only two profound ways to reach enlightenment: Laugh by yourself, or get tickled.

To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead.

You can't really control how people hear stuff. It's hard to remember that. I have to let go of it.

Dead … might not be quiet at all.

You have to be slightly blind to believe in any cause.

In Manhattan, I often do two or three or more shows a night, so I'm always working on new material.

I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.

I simply want to be remembered as a great competitor and a great teammate.

If you're sexy, everybody will love you. That's what I wanted -- for everybody to love me.