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I think a lot of composers get into trouble just making up a plot and expecting an audience to follow that.

There are so few directors who are musical who appreciate music.

There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unspeakable, all those things come into being a composer, into writing music, into searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist.

With a musical, you kind of have to do a mind-meld with the book-writer, the lyricist, the composer, the director - sometimes the producer. I think that's a reason why musicals are the hardest form.

I am not one of the great composers. All the great have produced enormously. There is everything in their work - the best and the worst, but there is always quantity. But I have written relatively little.

It's funny because as a composer, you want to hear your songs live on. I think a lot of times people will create a song and it becomes stagnant or something that they're no longer interested in playing, and they leave it alone.

I think one of the reasons musicians keep doing what they do and writers keep doing what they do, is that we're totally unsuited for anything else. And I for one am much too lazy.

Film composers are the most prolific music makers on this planet, and most of us are, like, losing our minds if we're doing five or more movies in a year.

Nobody can give a good performance unless the authors and composers have written a good part, a fact which is often overlooked.

One of the major aspects of film composing is that it's not so much a musical thing as it is communicating your ideas with the director, who often does not come from a musical background.