Hans Zimmer Quotations

If something happened where I couldn't write music anymore, it would kill me. It's not just a job. It's not just a hobby. It's why I get up in the morning.

The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.

Anything can become a musical sound. The wind on telegraph wires is a great sound; get it into your machine and play it and it becomes interesting.

Here's something I probably shouldn't be saying: I never listen to my soundtrack albums because I can't stand it. It's just stereo. When I write, I write in surround. My life is in surround.

With animated film, you have to create the sonic world; there's nothing there. You get to color things in more and you're allowed to overreach yourself a little bit more, and it's great fun.

'The Graduate' must be the best use of songs ever in a movie; it adds a layer to the movie you wouldn't ever get from a score.

When movies first came out, maybe they were in black and white and there wasn't any sound and people were saying the theater is still the place to be. But now movies and theater have found their own place in the world. They are each legitimate art forms.

You have to realize I like doing big movies that appear on a big screen. So the visuals and the audio have to be of a certain quality before I start to get excited about the thing.

It is a more honorable approach than the Red Sea parting shower curtain.

Wings of a Film: The Music of Hans Zimmer.

when (producers) are going, 'This scene really doesn't work and we need some help here,' and you realize what they're saying is you can make or break this movie.

Trust me, if you're working on a $70 million movie and you're the last guy, you feel all that weight on your shoulders,

A soundtrack can carry a visual along, be an unforgettable addition to the film and sometimes there is a small moment of something really great, which exists as beautiful music on its own merit.

I'm a geek and I'm a nerd, and I can listen into any piece of music. I think, I can usually tell you what orchestra it was, I can usually tell you what hall it was in. I can tell you, obviously who the conductor was, and who the composer was.

Trust me, if you're working on a $70 million movie and you're the last guy, you feel all that weight on your shoulders.

I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King I wrote over four hours worth of tunes, and they were really pretty -but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted.

When I was 13, when I was 14, when I was in England, yeah all I wanted to do was go and see The Who, go and see The Stones.

I have to give credit to Giorgio Moroder ; among the first to make us realize the importance of music in film.

What's the point of getting up in the morning unless you're gonna have an adventure? As the moments of our life are ticking away you have to be aware that it needs to be an adventure

The thing that hasn't changed, and I don't think will ever change, is that the operative word in music is "play." You have to have a playfulness about it. As the world shifts, it's starting to understand more and more that to have a playfulness about any and everything is actually the way of having a better life, or being more creative, or being more productive.

A violin is nothing more than a piece of wood and a dead cat. But it's a piece of technology. So when computers came along, in the '70s, I suddenly thought, hang on a second, this is interesting. These things can become an instrument. So I just became very interested in them, and started, playing with electronics.

Hollywood allows you to go and express yourself.

As opposed to being on the Internet, there's something really nice about reading a book or talking to authors.

Information is floating around really fast. I write something, or a piece of my music comes out and I see people writing about it on the Internet as if I'm having a conversation with them. We've never met, but somehow, my music is communicating something to them. Very often, it really makes them feel something.

You can only make a good noise on the guitar if you're committed. Little careful noise doesn't work. You have to be bold.

All music is based in one way or the other, or influenced through the ages, on technology.

I try to communicate with the musicians the way I communicate with the filmmakers. I'm not going to say to them, can we be a little bit more presto here. Hang on, this should be a bit more exciting, or I try to explain the scene to them, or I try to explain the context the notes are supposed to live in.

I've spent my life trying to make things simpler..

I've never had a real job in my life. I didn't learn anything, I was terrible at school. It was just this thing. Music was all I wanted to do.

I'm homeless, in a funny way. My culture I think is completely rooted in German 19th century music I suppose.

The main thing the composer needs to do is it needs to remember that the director is there to cheer you on. The director wants you to succeed because if you succeed, you'll be helping the film. And they are truly your conscience. And they're truly your guide.

I loved this idea of always being a foreigner. There's this thing where people bring cultures, bring the music together. I love it when the music, when the cultures collide and something sort of new comes out of it.

The first thing I think about is music, and the last thing I think about is music. I'm like some Monk. I don't see a lot of daylight. I hang out with musicians, I hang out with directors and I just try to spend as much of my life as possible playing music.

The lack of education means, the lack of having something I can pull out of a drawer, means I have to find something in any movie I work on that is intensely personal.

I wake up around noon, light a cigarette, get a cup of coffee, sit in the bathtub for an hour and daydream, and I usually come up with some ideas... It's a very irresponsible life. The only decisions I make are about the notes I'm writing.

Having the great opportunity on a daily basis to sit in front of a blank page is terrifying, and at the same time really exciting. I can't actually get better at my job, because every time you finish something you start with a blank page, with nothing.

America is a magical place, and I think my job, or the job of a lot of us European filmmakers is to just hold up America to Americans and present it to you in a new way. All I wanted to do is in a funny way say, "Look at your country. It's magnificent."

Electronic music lends itself to an abstract way of storytelling, so it keeps evolving. Theres a whole movement truly driving music further and there is no other music innovating as much as film music

The challenge in scoring a sequel is, how do you not get bored? The only way around that one is to go, "Okay, let's throw everything out that we had before and let's just see it as an autonomous movie, and let's just start again."

The honest truth is that it was just traumatizing with the piano, with the authority of the piano teacher, getting rapped across the knuckles, and so whenever you put a piece of music in front of me, there's a Pavlovian reaction where it starts off.

What are you going to do when you are not saving the world.

I grew up in a house full of music, and a house that didn't have a television. We had a piano, but no television. And really, I very quickly realized that this was, you know, there was magic there, there was magic to be had, you could lose yourself in it, it was a refuge, it was joy, it was all of those things.

I don't drive, so one of my assistants drives me to my writing room, and I have a calendar on the wall telling me how much time I have left, and how far behind I am. I look at it and panic, and decide which scene to work on. And you sit there plonking notes until something makes sense, and you don't think about it any more. Good tunes come when you're not thinking about it.

You have to remain flexible, and you must be your own critic at all times.

If something happened where I couldnt write music anymore, it would kill me. Its not just a job. Its not just a hobby. Its why I get up in the morning.

There's a power that movies and music has, that can move you and motivate you to look at your neighbor in a slightly more respectful way, and look at cultures in a more inclusive way.

The rules are: The more playful we get, the more we can get rid of the rules.

I think one of the things which always is forgotten in music class, is the first thing you have to do as a musician is you have to learn how to listen.

If you talk to any director, they'll say music is fifty percent of the movie.

I get all my good ideas sort of at one o' clock in the morning, and I tried for a while to behave like normal people.

Inspired music arises from an inspired movie which arises from an inspired script.

Never let your wife prevent you from buying equipment. A car will not buy a synthesizer, but a synthesizer can buy a car.

If I play you a piece of music, that's when you can truly look inside me.

Get rid of the shitty sound. Life's too short.

You're going to fail a few times, because that is the only time you actually learn something.

Why get up in the morning unless you’re going to have an adventure?

I want to go and write music that announces to you that you can feel something. I don’t want to tell you what to feel, but I just want you to have the possibility of feeling something.

You always hear these stories of how Hollywood is so merciless on composers and how they all get beaten up. Nobody beats me up as much as I beat myself up. This is what I love doing and I have one life to do it in, and I better do it right. I better do it well.

As the seconds of our lives are ticking away, you have to realize that life needs to be an adventure.

I've spent my life trying to make things simpler. Because I find ultimately that complicated doesn't reach the heart.

A good score should have a point of view all of its own. It should transcend all that has gone before, stand on its own two feet and still serve the movie. A great soundtrack is all about communicating with the audience, but we all try to bring something extra to the movie that is not entirely evident on screen.