With Hitchcock I had little relationship. I was called to replace Bernard Herrmann, his favorite composer, in Torn Curtain, after the bitter fight between them.

I was lucky Mozart was not eligible this year.

In that long sequence, when Lawrence enters in the desert to rescue a lost man, Lean listened the music I wrote and wanted to extend the scene to let my work stay completely.

Nowadays, if a studio assumes that his film is bad, there is always an executive that gets more nervous than usual and thinks that if they change the music, the film will become a masterpiece.

I began to write a kind of waltz and in a little more than an hour I had the theme written.

For Ryan's Daughter I used a total of eight harps, something that was, at least, weird.

A Passage to India. It is my favourite movie.

Soon I worked during twelve years in theater works of the prestigious Theatre National Populaire. It was the best time of my life, the most difficult, the most interesting, the most exciting.

When I was 15, I did not know nothing about what concerned the world of music.

My parents did not have any interest in music.

If you beget a monster of a child it could prove you were rather monstrous yourself.

I walk with a dual longing for life and for death.

At Juilliard, I couldn't afford to have fun. I went to school and stayed home.

As for drinks, I'm a sucker for flavored teas.

When I find a colour darker than black, I'll wear it. But until then, I'm wearing black!

Often the search proves more profitable than the goal.

We can trust God's heart even when we can't trace His path.

People only respond to fear.

I slept in the bedroom used by Sabine Baring-Goulds wife when I was researching The Moor, and later the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor.

You lose nothing through peace. You can lose everything through war.