The Edge Quotes

They sent me some tapes of the original Mole and I thought it was pretty intriguing. I'm sort of an experimenter; I thought it'd be interesting to play around and see what's there. It was fun. Turned out to be good.

I'm used to music as a tool, taking the various elements and then making something completely new out of them. And writing film music is the perfect opportunity to do that, because you can look at the film and then just let your imagination soar.

When you're in the middle of writing a song, you can come up with this whole web of stuff only you know how to get through. That's very entertaining for me to do that.

For example, after developing a sound similar to an elephant trumpeting, I wrote the song Elephant Talk which gave my elephant sound an appropriate place to live.

Imagination decides everything.

I don't know where I got the idea for 'The Great Thumbprint Drawing Book'; I just told my brain to think of a book, and it did.

But Contra la Puerta was done mostly in the opposite way, starting with sounds and melodies.

I say to my pupils, 'You can pitch me any thing you've got, but tell me why you're the only person who can write it in the world. Keep digging.'

I think, for me, a way to really come up with new ideas and come up with new ways of writing music is to create a unique sound palette or soundscape for all the films I'm working on.

What really excites me is the production. I get in there and change a lot of stuff.

I think I compose as a listener: improvising and listening back excites me because I get to ideas that never would have occurred. Then I bring in the computers and samplers... and I begin to loop and process and change them.

Johnny Andrews can make me fly with his ideas for new songs. It has always been a pure pleasure to write with him.

When I do a remix, I try to think about what I don't have in my bag and create something to fill that gap.

When you're sitting in the basement trying to get on, you have no choice - you've gotta figure out how to make a song: 'I've gotta bang on these buttons until it sounds good.'

When I give talks, I often quote from a button I received at a Google event: Always Be Creative. I use it to illustrate how important creativity is in technology and business.

The imagination is how things get done. You have to cultivate creativity.

My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.

My solution to the problem of unleashing creativity is always to set up a target.

Creativity, as I see it, is the process of putting your imagination to work. It's been defined rather simply as applied imagination. That's not a bad way to think about it.

I think when you're being creative, you still attach it to reality somehow.

I'm constantly writing music and keeping myself busy somehow.

It's important to have an imagination.

When I find stuff that's interesting, I try to get a hold of it so that when I do need to make something really cool, I have it on hand.

I feel like I spend most of my time in a state of writer's block! When things do come out, they come out quickly.

I always imagine, and try to be on the lookout, for new things, for references that can inspire me creatively so I can showcase things that people haven't done before or that are new.