Thomas Newman

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

“There were certain things in 'Nemo' - just this low hum of ocean and watery sound - that was enough to imply water, as opposed to restating it over and over again.”

“My father used to say it was just there, the opportunity. It was all teed up for him. The talkies were starting, and here was Hollywood waiting for people to come from New York who had the training, who could do music with a sense of dramatic context.”

“Movie music allows me to work with players as creatively as I can.”

“The rare opportunity of writing music for a movie about the making of 'Mary Poppins' was impossible to ignore. The fact that it could provide emotional content in relief of the struggles that the Sherman brothers and Walt Disney endured was reason enough to take on the challenge.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Sometimes the best experiences are when I know nothing about this movie: I've never met the director, and I come and see something and I'm blank, because then it's coming at you in a way it would never come at you if you'd read the script, with an expectation.”

“It's always nice to remember that there was a time when I loved something that I didn't know much about; it just reached my ears and moved me.”

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

“Part of me wants to stay hidden; it's no coincidence that I write movie music. It lets me stay in the shadows, in a way, but still lets me be expressive.”

“The experience of a film is immersive, and music is supposed to underline and help that experience.”

“When you see an early edited version, you're not sure what it is. The movie is getting on its wobbly legs.”

“I flew to England to see the rough cut of 'Revolutionary Road.' I was quite moved. As a married man, it's kind of disturbing to see a couple try so hard to work things out and fail so miserably.”

“In animation, action is changing so quickly that there's really not a lot of suspended moments.”

“Music is one of the last elements in the creative process. It can and hopefully should tie a bow around an artistic concept, how a story moves forward, the pace of that storytelling.”

“There was no way I could not do 'Finding Dory.'”

“Losing makes you strong.”

“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.”

“You want to say as little as you can and get the most punch out of it, always with the knowledge that people are not in the theater to listen to your music so much as to respond to the movie. You're a part of that experience.”