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

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

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.

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.

If walls could talk - scratch that, if walls could make sarcastic comments... well, things would be interesting.

Human beings can be awful, but they can also be tremendous.

You get to Alcatraz by being the worst of the worst. Unless you're me. I came here because my mother said I had to.

As on many mornings in Marin, there is this sly strip of fog - water in it's most mystical incarnation - slithering over, around, and through the hills, making everything look ancient and unsolved.

Pause and remember - Change will happen the moment you have the courage to change.

I will direct one day, but I have a feeling that it will be very limited.

The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.

We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress, we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt.

Drink poison rather than worry.

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's.