16 Quotes by James Horner

When I do a film score, I am basically nothing more than a fancy pencil for hire. I don't own any of the music when I am - it belongs to the film company - and likewise, when I am done, even if I come up with something astounding that I may want to revisit... in the world of film composition, you can't do that.

My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.

I don't use a computer in writing at all. I'm sort of old-fashioned about it.

I think very abstractly when I'm writing. Then, as the project moves on, it becomes more like sculpting.

I tend to write it and then let go emotionally.

I think people hire me for the slightly weird angle that I bring. Part of the trick is keeping it sort of simple; you have to give the impression of not that much music playing when there's really a lot.

To me, writing and composing are much more like painting, about colors and brushes; I don't use a computer when I write, and I don't use a piano. I'm at a desk writing, and it's very broad strokes and notes as colors on a palette.

You have to make an audience experience with the ears as well as their eyes.

The sound world that I created for 'Avatar' had to be very different, really, than anything I ever created before. There is also three hours of music.