Quotes from Thomas Newman

If you fail, fail fast enough so you can regroup and do it better.

You can always hear a director saying, 'Well I don't really know what this piece is saying, so therefore, I reject it.' There are any number of things you can anticipate going wrong, and sometimes they go right. But I think the things you like most are the things that get rejected first. That's just how things work.

I'm a huge fan of not overemphasising with music.

I realized so much of my life hasn't been in a well-lit room, and I realized the importance of documenting my experiences as a way to memorialize them.

What satisfies me most are those nonverbal moments with players, when I sense them thinking and responding. And I think, 'Wow, this is amazing.' Hollywood gives us the money to do this. I want to be grateful for that, and I also don't want to waste it.

'Sugarcoat the Galaxy' is inspired by color-inflected photographs of galaxies. It likens sounds to spun sugar and confection, wrapping static harmonies inside energy and pace.

In general, I probably have a shy nature. So the idea of poking out with my music is probably not something I want to do.

There were moments in 'Malala,' I felt very moved by the storytelling, and 'pleased' would be the wrong word, but the music could be part of what moved me: that I was trying to contribute to something that was meaningful outside the realm of creative work but just more in terms of the world.

In 'Saving Mr. Banks,' the challenge was just transitions. Time transitions from 1961 to 1906; how do you follow a character in one environment to another? And sometimes these transitions were quick, so how do you do that?

Whatever you say to yourself about it being just another movie, and you're going to do the job you always do, it ends up being a 'Bond' movie and a sense of what it is to put music to James Bond and to honor the music that exists.

It's always easy, I think, to raise the importance of a scene through the addition of music. But it's very awkward to end it unless there's a door slam or a gunshot or something that just takes you right out of it.

My father's Alfred Newman - born in 1900, child prodigy at the piano, ended up in pit orchestras in the teens. I think he's one of the youngest conductors to conduct Broadway and worked with George Gershwin and Jerome Kern and Cole Porter - went out with Irvin Berlin in 1930 to Hollywood and never left.

My uncle Lionel ended up being a bug guy at 20th Century Fox, which my father had been - and, of course, my cousin Randy - you know, one of the great American songwriters. It was a storied family and, in many ways, very tough to emerge from.

After the music that had been created by my family, I thought there was no way I could stack up.

I had ideas. A lot were good, but in many ways, I had no idea or experience about how to carry them out.

'The Starship Avalon' is perpetually mobile. The music is designed to give the impression of endless sleep and endless journey with a significant interruption that guides the story that follows. It's color and pulse followed by great size.

In live action, sometimes a mood or a feeling can go on for quite a while. Animation is a lot more effort. There are a lot more notes.

There's nothing like desperation to sharpen your sense of focus.

In the end, you don't want music to be noticed as much as digested and integrated into the storytelling. And make audiences sit forward in their seats and enjoy the movie.

I think as storytelling has changed, you know, it's kind of turned into kind of hyper-reality movies.

I think I compose as a listener: improvising and listening back excites me because I get to ideas that never would have occurred. Then I bring in the computers and samplers... and I begin to loop and process and change them.

Music is such an odd thing when you think about it - behind an image until you take it away, and then you realize a movie sounds blank without it.

I just want my music to involve an audience in what's taking place onscreen.

It's a practical matter. If you're useful to others, you'll be hired.