“When I lost a tennis match that made me upset or hurt emotionally I would find myself going to the piano and playing for hours. It was my place of refuge and solace.”

I have a huge record and cd collection of all kinds of great classical, jazz and all music but I find the internet very accessible and quick.

When you play competitive tennis you are competing against someone else and you have to win. Playing music I didn’t have to win I had to become better within myself.

The thing I learned from playing tennis is that I know what competition is. I can handle rejection.

There is competition. It’s almost like I’m back in tennis competing in a way. There are usually about twenty composers vying for the number one spot for a big or medium film.

Sometimes it’s very hard to turn off my brain especially when I have an eighteen hour day. I try to stop working by 10 or 11pm but you know sometimes there is nothing I can do about it.

I was an accomplished junior tennis player up to around fourteen years old. At fourteen or fifteen I made the decision to venture off to make my life 100% music.

Composers can do things that weren’t allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules.

You cannot do what I do for a living without having a thick skin.

It all started when I got injured early in my second season. This turned out to be as difficult emotionally as physically.

When I get a very generous introduction like that I explain that I’m emotionally moved, but on the other hand I’m Irish and the Irish are very emotionally moved. My mother is Irish and she cries during beer commercials.

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true […].

Emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

I’m looking for a life partner and I’m not ready. I’m not emotionally mature enough.

It’s purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.

So I used formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally.

You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.