Top 40 Hans Zimmer Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “If I play you a piece of music, that’s when you can truly look inside me.”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

Featured in: Growth Mindset Quotes

4. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

6. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

8. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

10. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

11. “If you talk to any director, they’ll say music is fifty percent of the movie.”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

13. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

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14. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

16. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

18. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

19. “Inspired music arises from an inspired movie which arises from an inspired script.”

— Hans Zimmer

20. “I’ve spent my life trying to make things simpler...”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

23. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

24. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

25. “If somebody tells you a rule, break it. That’s the only thing to move things forward.”

— Hans Zimmer

26. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

27. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

29. “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.””

— Hans Zimmer

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

— Hans Zimmer

31. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

32. “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.””

— Hans Zimmer

33. “Hollywood allows you to go and express yourself.”

— Hans Zimmer

34. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

35. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

36. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

37. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

38. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

39. “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.”

— Hans Zimmer

40. “If somebody tells you there’s a rule, break it.”

— Hans Zimmer

41. “When all you’ve got is nothing, there’s a lot to go around.”

— Hans Zimmer