James Horner Quotes

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

— James Horner

“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.”

— James Horner

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

— James Horner

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.

— James Horner

The music's job is to get the audience so involved that they forget how the movie turns out.

— James Horner

I tend to write it and then let go emotionally.

— James Horner

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

— James Horner

“I'm used to working with the director and producer, and that's my relationship. It's very simple.”

— James Horner

“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.”

— James Horner

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.

— 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.

— James Horner

“I'm a fanatic about Irish music. I love its moody, modal and timeless quality. I'm different from some other composers, because I don't look at this as just a job. I think of music as art.”

— James Horner

“I'm sure that I was influenced by Goldsmith's large orchestral scores when I started out, and that was because the people who employed me wanted that kind of sound. I wasn't in a position to say, 'Go to Hell!'”

— James Horner

“I am a musicologist, a doctor of music. Therefore I listened to, studied and analysed a lot of music. I also enjoy metaphors, the art of quoting and of cycles.”

— James Horner