Ennio Morricone

“I like to feel and understand people's contentment with what I've done.”

“There was a theft! But, of course, if it was up to me, every two years I would win an Oscar.”

“Music needs room to breathe.”

“I often use the same harmonies as pop music because the complexity of what I do is elsewhere.”

“They're all my children... every score I've done.”

“Bernard Herrmann used to write all his scores by himself. So did Bach, Beethoven and Stravinsky. I don't understand why this happens in the movie industry.”

“Some movies work really well with music from Bach or Mahler that existed long before the film, so music has its own autonomy.”

“When I have to score a film, I watch the movie first and then start thinking about it. And from that moment on, it is as if I were pregnant. I then have to deliver the child, so from that moment on, I think always about the music - even when I go to the grocery store, I think about it.”

“My more risky or avant garde music is not that well known to a wider audience, but I wish it was.”

“If you scroll through all the movies I've worked on, you can understand how I was a specialist in westerns, love stories, political movies, action thrillers, horror movies, and so on. So in other words, I'm no specialist, because I've done everything. I'm a specialist in music.”

“It had a very good arrangement by Herbie Hancock, but it used existing pieces.”

“In music, what is very important is temporality of space and length, based on the breathing space the director gives the music within the film, by separating the music from various elements of reality, like noises, dialogues... That's how you treat music properly, but it doesn't always happen this way. Music is often blamed, but it's not its fault.”

“I was born in 1928, so in 1943, 1944, we had the war in Rome. There were a lot of hardships, a lack of food, many shortages. So when I worked with the Americans, the English, and the Canadians soon after the war, when I played with them, they paid me with food. That will give you an idea how widespread poverty was at that time.”

“I can't be enthusiastic as soon as I write something on the music sheet. The music sheet is only the beginning: it has to be listened to, played by the instruments, and then heard by the director, but most importantly, it has to be listened to by the public.”

“De Palma is delicious! He respects music; he respects composers. For 'The Untouchables,' everything I proposed to him was fine, but then he wanted a piece that I didn't like at all, and of course we didn't have an agreement on that. It was something I didn't want to write - a triumphal piece for the police.”

“There are some directors who actually fear the possible success of music. They fear that the audience or the critics will think the film has worked because there was a very good music score.”

“I dislike cats. I like horses, some monkeys, and sweet dogs that aren't too aggressive. I used to have a wonderful, big cat, and one day I came into the kitchen and it was on the table, ruining all the food we were about to eat. I was so annoyed that I took it to a friend's house in the country.”

“Everyone has to die. I'm not particularly scared about it. What really frightens me is that if I go before my wife, I will leave her alone, and vice versa. The ideal would be to die together.”

“It could have been extremely boring to write musical scores for only westerns of horror films. It was really exciting for me to work in all these various genres.”

“The respect for a musical score must come from the director... If the director has no power and has to surrender to budgetary constraints, this is where we have the problem.”