James Newton Howard

“Tchaikovsky was one of the great melody writers of all time.”

“Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before.”

“With any movie at all the challenge lies in the storytelling.”

“I would say, generally speaking, though it is not always the case, comedy is probably the least gratifying for most composers because it is more specific about what the music needs to do.”

“I like to pace myself at about two minutes of music a day. With 'Waterworld' it was closer to five minutes a day, which is uncomfortable and slightly terrifying.”

“I just go from one movie to the next and try not to get fired.”

“I've been lucky to have been given opportunities in different genres. And most of the time I've felt that the exploration, the composing, the collaboration, was a move forward.”

“One of my biggest goals in writing the music for 'Fantastic Beasts' was to create memorable melodies. J.K. Rowling's world has always had a great musical legacy and I was hoping to continue that tradition.”

“Music can help uncover that tone that's in the fabric of the movie. Sometimes it's very plain to see, sometimes it's not.”

“I was a piano performance major at USC. I left before I graduated because I realized at some point I wasn't going to be a concert pianist and I was too attracted to popular music.”

“I'm a melody guy. To me, that's a musical souvenir people take from a movie. They remember a theme or a feeling, and if they've had a good or bad experience it evokes that sensation whenever they hear it again.”

“I really don't think about the Oscars.”

“For me, the biggest thing was writing memorable themes for the new characters so that ultimately people would have the same identification with 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' as they do with the Harry Potter films.”

“One day I was watching some pundits screaming at each other on a news show. It suddenly reminded me of this painting on my wall, of balloons with goofy faces rising - pundits screaming at each other and arguing off into the ether.”