In Puerto Rico, I played in all kinds of bands that played salsa and merengue. That's how I saved the money to come to the U.S. We used to play El Gran Combo tunes. Half the band was my friends - we were around 15 - and the other half was my friend's father and his friends from the hospital where he worked. They were all, like, 50.

As a composer, I'm basically trying to represent myself through my music in an honest way.

I feel that, as a Puerto Rican and Latin American musician, a lot of the stuff that I write, even if I mean it or not, is gonna have some elements of that.

I was actually born and raised in Puerto Rico. I moved to the States when I was 19. I was very impressed early on by being around people who spoke my language and ate the same food and listened to the same music, dressed the same. But then you look around and, you know, you're not in Puerto Rico.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

I was going mad. One day, I just started writing, and it was like therapy because I was in a position where I couldn't rage. I never expected to be a writer; it's a different world than I ever expected to be in.

There were aspects of stardom I didn't like, which were of no consequence, really, but the positive things far outweighed the negative. By the time I came to write 'Setting Sons,' I felt my writing was more like prose, set to music.

Every animated film that I've worked on - whether it was as a story artist or as Head of Story or even as director - where we originally started out with our story and where we eventually ended up were often very different places.