I always go back to the original material. I want a good connection as the composer and writer of the score to the director and to the source material. It's really important.

Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings.

You can find the whole world of a film in one instrument, or you can find a world of sound in the orchestra.

I have to feel something emotionally on the story to be able to write for it. I turn things down if I don't feel I'm really right to tell that particular story.

The art of making films is a collaborative art. As a composer, you're always working with the cinematographer because he's so much the heart of the world they've created on film.

Film music really is about point of view and you can shift it wherever you want really depending on how you look at it.

Sometimes you want to use the music in a clarity way to explain something in the film.

When you're working on a film, it's intense and it's very all-consuming. There's not something in particular.

Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling.

I've been writing music since I was 9. I took harmony and counterpoint classes when I was studying the clarinet. So, I've been writing for an awfully long time. It just became part of everyday life.

I live in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. and spend time in the West Village, where my wife Elizabeth Cotnoir, a writer-producer and documentary filmmaker, has an office.

Dreams are born from the Rubbles of Pain.

In the whole world, Everyone is a creative with their own way and idea.

When we lose one we love our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

Just because a romantic relationship ends doesn't mean that the other facets of your relationship have to end... or, indeed, doesn't mean they can't get better.

I am a pastor, and I teach and preach the Bible to my congregation every week. But the Bible is not a manufacturer's handbook. Neither is it a science textbook nor a guidebook for public policy.

People from small towns have to have their edges roughed up to get along in the world. But as a street reporter, you learn quickly.

Those who believe patriotism to be the last refuge of the scoundrel have underestimated compassion.

I love 'Saturday Night Live,' and it's such a funny show. I don't know if I'm funny enough to be on it but definitely would be interested in doing it.

Don't sing a song you can't carry off, like some 16-year-old kid singing 'My Way'. That song's not for you. You haven't lived that.

It is always the right time to do the right thing.