I work on the types of movies that I would have loved watching as a kid.

My dad had these great Benny Goodman albums that I was obsessed with, and Louis Prima's another guy I loved, and Peter Niro the jazz pianist. I loved international music: Irish music, Mexican music. I love the different colours that they all have.

I always thought of 'Lost' as a psychotic opera. Because there were so many characters, it was important for me to track them with themes.

I've always looked at guys who I've admired, like John Williams and Lalo Schifrin and Max Steiner, and looked at the choices they made and always try to take a cue from that.

I always feel like my writing is consistently influenced by everything I watched and listened to growing up, so it's just this crazy collage of everything, you know.

Sometimes people do things because they are sad or because they are upset or were hurt by other people.

I loved writing 'Lost.' It was like a never-ending opera, in a way.

I think the Wachowskis are two of my favorite people on the planet; they're the best.

I don't like working all hours of the night and having an unreliable working pattern.

Of everything I've done in my career, or whatever you want to call it, 'Lost' is the purest version of me musically.

That's one of the neat things about 'Call of Duty.' There are areas in the game where we were able to score the gameplay.

My entire life was making movies.

I was fortunate enough in my public school that they had a full music program, and no one escaped it. It was treated as a subject that was as important as everything else, and I believe it is.

If you have a bad story on your hands, you have a bad story on your hands, and no amount of score re-working is gonna save that.

I think I learned everything about comedy and timing and drama from watching 'The Muppet Show,' which was one of the best shows ever produced.

I love percussive instrumentation.

If you listen to a score from beginning to end, you should envision the entire film in your head.

As an audience member, everyone I talk to is like, 'I'm so excited to see 'Super 8.' I'm so excited to see it.' And part of that is because of his drive to make sure that it stays hidden until the last minute.

When you're starting out in this business, it's very easy to want to say yes to everything that's offered to you.

When I was 9, I saw 'Star Wars,' and it set me on a path to where I am today.

Nothing can grab you by the throat - or heart or soul - like an orchestra. It's undeniably the most engaging and exciting way to bring a score to life.

I have an uncle who was heavily involved in World War 2, so over the years, I've talked to him many times.

'Lost' is such a thematic show that I'm always afraid that if I know something's going to happen at the end, I'll subconsciously write something in where someone who's astute will go, 'Oh, he used so-and-so's theme: that must mean so-and-so is coming back!'

I used to do puppet shows as a kid - me and my brother would do them - and then any poor soul who came into the house had to sit and watch our puppet shows.

Because of John Williams, I began collecting all kinds of film scores. I listened to them when I fell asleep, and it was through my obsessive listening that I learned what all the different parts of the orchestra were. I learnt a great deal from him by just simply listening.

For me, the music is always speaking from the point of view of the characters. Rarely do you score an event.

I grew up listening to 'Planet of the Apes' and other scores, and it was fun for me because you weren't just listening to those scores, but you were also questioning what you were listening to. What are those sounds?

That's the time I remember as a kid, being so excited to go to the movies. To be part of that now is really an amazing gift.

If you look at my credits, most of them are the same directors over and over.

I think that to capture food in music, you really are capturing an emotional response to food.

When I was a kid, I wanted to make movies. In particular, I loved animation and would love to have been an animator.

I think that one of the things I'd learned from being so attentive to the careers of the people I've admired is the fact that they would say 'no' a lot. Early on, I took that as a cue to only work on things that I knew I would be passionate about.

I started out as a producer. and I used to work at Disney. and I worked with a lot of the animators and went on to become great friends with a lot of these guys and worked on a lot of projects together.

People on 'The Incredibles' would ask me if I listened to a lot of spy scores, but no, I don't.

I grew up listening to every style of music you can imagine, and I have a love for all of it.

You've all seen movies where the music isn't working with the story. And it's either because... the story isn't working itself. Or the composer kinda just wants to write whatever they want to write, not paying attention to the thing.

I grew up with so many different sounds, and 'Lost' allows me to express all of it, the melodic and the atonal.

For some reason, as a kid, I felt outwardly embarrassed to say that I liked rock music. I don't know where that came from. For me, it just wasn't cool - orchestral music was cool.

As a kid I was obsessed with monster movies.

My great uncle, my mom's uncle, had an appliance store in Philadelphia, and it was called Peter's TV. They sold stereos and televisions and washers, dryers, all kinds of stuff.

There was a paperwork mishap on 'War For The Planet Of The Apes,' in that the end credits was simply called 'End Credits.' And that's what appears on the album. Once we realised that was out there, we were so ashamed.

There have been several movies that I've done over the years that have got a bad shake - 'Speed Racer' was one of them. I loved that movie, and the fact it got such a bad reception was disheartening.

I was pretty lucky to have grown up during the 'Star Wars,' 'Indiana Jones' and 'E.T.' years.

The very first game I worked on was for DreamWorks Interactive's 'The Lost World: Jurassic Park.'

I love Glenn Gould. Max Steiner. John Williams. Louis Prima. Benny Goodman. Miles Davis. John Philip Sousa.

When artists find other artists that they love to work with, they more than likely will continue to work with them throughout their career.

When I was a kid, there was no DVD, no VHS. The only way to re-live a movie once it was out of the theater was to listen to its film score.

The 'Jonny Quest' theme had a huge influence on me while I was growing up.

I love classic animation, and I especially love classic cartoon music.

Filmmaking is hard enough as it is. If you can find a group you love working with, it makes it just a little bit easier.