The piano is really the featured instrument of a 10-piece chamber orchestra. The construction is the harmonic language.

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.

Failure is only an option

Population pressure is the ultimate cause of every war.

The loving touch, like music, often utters the things that cannot be spoken.

I use humour a lot. My foundation is tragic, but my appearance is humorous.

The only time not wasted is wasted time.

If you’re following God and haven’t lost much of what you’ve been holding on to - follow a little closer.

The knowledge of evil tempteth to its commission.

War will exist as long as there's a food chain.

Every time I design clothes, I'm making a movie.

Ah, Lord God, thou holy lover of my soul, when thou comest into my heart, all that is within me shall rejoice.