Talent is like a birthmark - it's a gift and no credit nor fault to those who wear them.
. . . but it's your existence I love you for, mainly. Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.
Love is holy because it is like grace--the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of it, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.
Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.
He [Christ] even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail.
I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it.
Never loan your car to anyone to whom you've given birth.
I don't know anyone who sits down to write a song hit except Irving Berlin. He can't help writing hits.
I really like to absorb the project and watch it and work on the music a lot and just get the feel for it until eventually a moment comes where I know I've got it. A lot of it is trial and error. Some days a piece of music doesn't work then other day another piece of music finally says something and works with the picture and suddenly casts a light on all the other stuff you've done - probably because my mind is getting to understand it and the piece is educating me. I always feel like the score is in there already somewhere and I just have to channel it and accent it.
I have a love interest in every one of my films: a gun.