We're all inspired by what has come before us, but hope to use the inspiration to create our own. That's the artist's journey. It's a pretty amazing path.

I like the sounds of real, living, breathing musicians. When a real person plays something, there's a soul. They're giving you their emotions.

I'm not the kind of person who works 24 hours a day, mostly out of laziness; I don't know.

For me, growing-up music was always about telling stories.

The Internet's a crazy place to hang out because it's insane to see so many people doing so many creative things all over the map.

There are a lot of guys who do this job, and they have tons of assistants. They all kind of write together, and for me, it's basically me here in this room, and that's it.

I think Mozart, with all his impatience in writing, would have loved it. It would have allowed him to write twice as much. He would have loved a Mac. If he'd had a laptop, he would have been unstoppable.

When I was 10, I had a group of friends that I used to love to make movies with, and we made them growing up; we did it all through high school.

I think my writing has an old-fashioned feel to it for whatever reason. I'm just so influenced by the music that I listened to growing up, a lot of it out of the '60s, so it has a natural tendency to feel like it's from another era.

I like to write a piece of music that reflects how I felt about a film as opposed to, here's this action scene; here's this set piece.

Music helps immensely with math skills, and math skills help immensely with music skills.

Scoring animated films, I have the exact same approach and philosophy as I do for a live action. It's all story- and character-driven. I don't care if it's a mouse or Tom Cruise.

It wasn't until high school that I actually started writing. I was in a lot of the school plays and musicals, and there was a lot of down time during rehearsals. I would go into the orchestra pit and mess around on the grand piano.

I have tons of drawings of 'Star Wars,' whether it be stormtroopers, Darth Vader, Star Destroyers, or the whole thing.

One of the things I was never thrilled about with 'Medal of Honor' was that it was non-stop music.

There was a time that I did 'Up,' 'Star Trek' and 'Land of the Lost,' and I was working on 'Lost,' at the same time, and that was really hard.

I loved 'Planet of the Apes,' and I loved 'Star Wars,' and I loved 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' and to me, the goal always was to work on something as cool as that.

I lived in New York City for six years, and I was always amazed at how diverse everything was.

When you write for an orchestra, the sky's the limit.

There's so much fun you can have with your instruments that no one ever taught you.

Working with Kevin Feige has just been a joy.

On 'Lost,' I write a score and orchestrate it on days one and two; I record it on day three. In animation and film and videogames, you have a little more time to work things through.

I like live musicians and personally orchestrate about 80 to 90% of all my scores.

I even went to film school at School of Visual Arts in New York City. And then, after that, I got a day job at Universal publicity department, then moved over to Disney publicity department. So I had this day job, and at night I would study music.

My dad gave me his camera, so I spent my childhood making movies with the kids in the neighborhood as actors.

I always loved movies like 'King Kong' and 'Planet of the Apes,' monster movies, Ray Harryhausen films, all of that stuff. I always loved the music in them, too.

Art is difficult. It's not always going to please everyone; it's not always going to work the way you want it to work.

I love Batman.

My parents loved music, but they weren't musicians. So my musical training as a young kid was limited to piano lessons. I was not the best student; I was awful, never practiced. But I was always interested in just messing around on the piano.

I was never one of those people that would just take jobs that were thrown at me.

I made tons of stop motion films with my friends in my neighborhood.

My dad had a great record collection, which included some music from Mexico, and so I always loved it.

I've been pretty lucky in that I'm not a big writer's block kind of person.

I've always, always, always listened to music since I was, like, 7 years old and made up stories in my head based on what I was hearing.

I watched 'Land of the Lost' as a kid, you know, incessantly. I loved it. Me and my brother watched it every Saturday.

I always liked melody.

Most television, the music is very much the same from show to show.

As a kid, I would listen to anything that had a live orchestra or ensemble playing, so that covered everything from show tunes to eclectic jazz things to film soundtracks to classical music. They're all inspiring to me.

Hopefully, by the time I do a project, I already have a true understanding and love of what I'm about to do because if I don't, I'm not going to work on that project. I really want to have those connections so I can be truthful to the emotional aspect of what I have to deliver for the story.

I was obsessed with 'The Twilight Zone' as a kid, and one of those things I didn't realize until I was in college was that I had been listening to Bernard Herrmann all my life.

Who can't relate to a story of a dreamer who, against all odds, is going to make something of himself that is completely unexpected?

Life is #1 on the agenda, and #2 is work.

Many film scores try to force an emotion into a story that inherently is not there in the first place.

I like to think that I probably have written more World War II music than anyone on the planet after all the 'Medal of Honors' and 'Call of Duties.'

'Lost,' at its core, is a science-fiction show. Live music helps lend an air of legitimacy to this otherwise crazy storyline. It makes a big difference.

I feel like I'll be writing World War 2 music the rest of my life.

When I was growing up, every show had live music. Now, almost none have live music. Probably 97 percent of the shows on television are probably synthesized, or mostly synthesized, and that's a shame.

In 'Ratatouille,' there are two different themes that express the two sides of Remy's personality: the creative side: the chef, and the 'thief' side: his nature as a mouse.

I try to keep a regular work schedule.

Without my experiences on the likes of 'Lost' and 'Alias,' I don't know if I would have survived 'Rogue One.'