Alan Menken

For a brief period, I had a gentleman's farm in Pennsylvania, but even then, I kept a place in New York. ”

Movies, there are moments when you're writing a song or demoing, a moment in the recording studio. Musicals much more just eat up your life for a certain period of time. ”

Snow White' was really hip for its time. Walt Disney was basically using Sigmund Romberg and operetta in the telling of the story, and through animation - that was revolutionary. ”

Every time I play 'Part of Your World,' a whole part of my life comes back to me. It's just inescapable - it was an innocent time, and a sense of discovery that we were all involved with. ”

TV is a medium where I've been an outsider for the most part. ”

My favorite thing is a brand-new project from scratch because you really never know how they're going to come to life. Going back for the third and fourth time to old ones is very gratifying, but it's not my favorite use of my creativity. ”

Movies, you can insulate yourself more from audience, to a degree, and just look at box office. In theater, the audience is a very dynamic part of your process, and you feel much more exposed. ”

In animation, the directors are part of a huge team of animators who all have opinions, too. It's a much more democratic process. Also, the animation executives oversee things more. ”

It's writing songs within the structure of telling a story, so it becomes a platform for diverse songwriting, for a writing process that's broader than just figuring out a song. You're also dealing with always pushing the story forward, with casting the voices, with the orchestration, with the arrangements. ”

The job, when you write film underscore, is to be ignored. That comes with the gig, no question about it. ”