Carefully execute every instruction given to you by the director, producer, and studio. But that would be a life not worth living.

Big Sur is at the end of the continent. It attracts really crazy people.

When the systems we expect to help us actually hurt us, we have tragedy.

All my music is very simple in that melody is usually clearly stated.

In mainstream romantic comedies, I'm usually tearing my hair out. It's just a devastatingly difficult genre for me.

How does my music connect to an audience? That is just a complete mystery to me.

On Being John Malkovich and the cinema of the absurd, I do enjoy it. I wish there were more like it. The very fact that there can't be more like it is one of the reasons it's admirable.

A carefree quality is a whole aspect of life that I will never understand. I don't think I have ever been carefree and can't see the pleasure of it.

I prefer a life in which we don't take ourselves too seriously.

There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen.

The jarring change going from an urban environment to an extremely remote natural environment is extremely inspiring. It's constantly stimulating, it's like a slap in the face.

Performing written music, even when I've written it, is not very interesting to me.

New Yorkers may think they're on some cutting edge, but that's not especially true. It is, however, the most exciting heterogeneous mess of a town I've ever seen.

Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films.

Most films I work on, the people making the film are constantly second-guessing the executives of the studio, the producer, and the audience. It is very hard to accomplish anything in that situation.