A. R. Rahman Quotations

The institution of marriage works better when there's a spiritual connection. If you're marrying just for the sake of the woman, then you may lose interest in each other very soon. When we marry in the interest of the Holy Spirit with the intention of serving God and humanity, then it gives a much larger perspective.

For me, there is no day or night for music. I often work through the night - without phone calls disturbing me.

I want young Indian composers to be able to do more than just film music. I want to give them the skills that will enable them to create their own palette of sounds instead of having to write formulaic music. It doesn't matter if they become sound engineers, producers, composers or performers - I want them to be as imaginative as they like.

Each one of us has our own evolution of life, and each one of us goes through different tests which are unique and challenging. But certain things are common. And we do learn things from each other's experience. On a spiritual journey, we all have the same destination.

I believe that whatever comes at a particular time is a blessing from God.

Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.

After a point of time, when you get success and fame, money and everything, the purpose of life has to be redefined. For me, I think that purpose is to build bridges. Artists can do that very easily, more than politicians.

The idea of music is to liberate the listener and lead him to a frame where he feels he is elevated.

I grew up on Bach and Beethoven, and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff.

My mother's belief in spiritual healers grew stronger after our family went through a rough patch following my father's death. Sufi saint Karimullah Shah Kadri changed our lives, and all of us converted to Sufism. But it wasn't an instantaneous decision - it took us 10 years to convert. The change in religion was like washing away the past.

When you do something with a lot of honesty, appetite and commitment, the input reflects the output.

Every time I sit for a song, I feel I am finished. It's like a beggar sitting waiting for God to fill your bowl with the right thought. In every song, I ask help from Him. Everybody around is so good, so to create music that will connect with so many people is not humanly possible without inspiration.

I have too many responsibilities and principles. There's no time for 'guilty' pleasures.

It's true that I love to connect with my fans on the social networking sites, but I try not to go overboard, ever. I just give people a peek into my mind space, but never bombard them with my tweets.

My music is mostly for the music. And it gives the liberty to do anything which I want. And nobody limits me to one genre of music. But I learn from life and I try to give back to life, in a way, whether it's the thought of the song or whether it's the approach to the arrangement or anything.

I was a common man, and I will always remain a common man. No amount of stardom will ever consume my soul. Money comes, money goes. Fame comes, fame goes. I believe every human being is a celebrity in their own right.

I am the kind of person who does not like to carry baggage. In fact, I don't go back and listen to my own music. I believe in closing chapters and moving forward. That's what gives me peace.

Success comes to those who dedicate everything to their passion in life. To be successful, it is also very important to be humble and never let fame or money travel to your head.

Sometimes, a remix is good because it reaches a whole new generation. But when it gets too much, it's irritating. Also, the original composer needs to be credited properly.

Wisdom comes from within. Knowledge is acquired and can sometimes put a screen on your wisdom.

I feel blessed and humbled that people have loved my music. Nothing would be possible without their acceptance.

It's like driving your car. If you drive too fast on the highway, you will topple, so you better maintain your speed. Life is similar to that, and that's the way you have to control your head.

I compose music for films, and by the grace of God, I've got a few awards. That's it.

I divide criticism into two categories - one coming from those who understand music, who are worthy of being critical because they are knowledgeable about what they are saying; and then there is another category of people who would criticise you anyway, whether your work is good or bad.

If you respect a language and culture, it shows in your work.

I think music, in my opinion, is not about motivation in the way it's - it's not a running base. It's art. And my whole philosophy of music is different. It's almost like cooking and serving to people, seeing them smile and enjoying the food, really.

Beautiful film music can be made relevant to any period.

I love great lyrics, and I love the way it could shape a tune into a very unpredictable one, and I also like taking a great melody and putting lyrics into it.

So long as you do it truthfully, music is not to be judged.

If there is no criticism, you become lazy. But it should be constructive, and it should be the truth. If it's biased and there's no truth in it, then I don't care about it. If it's true, it helps me grow.

Music is the only passion I shamelessly indulge in. However, for recreation I enjoy watching movies. 'Wizard of Oz' was the first film I ever saw, followed by the 'Bond' movies. I also watch a lot of World cinema through DVDs mostly brought by one of my best friends who's now based in Toronto.

I'm a Sufi Muslim, I would say. I believe in using the medium to create a good vibration because art is so important to society. Some projects I don't do because I feel that it's going to create a bad vibe. I don't do propaganda films that are anti another religion, anti-Muslim or anti-Hindu.

Comedy is a universal language. I grew up watching Nagesh, Surilirajan, Thenga Srinivasan and S.V. Shekhar's comedies. And, of course, Charlie Chaplin! These artists are so blessed: they can make other people happy.

The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.

A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.

I am a friend when I need to be a friend, a father when I need to be a father, a musician when music calls. I switch roles accordingly.

A musician is a professional, whether he or she is successful or not. The profession itself must be regarded as a stable job.

I don't want to expose my personal life. It's best that people know me for my work. My family doesn't want to be surrounded by cameras. We want to live like any other family.

I follow a simple formula when I compose. I ask myself, 'What would the audience want to hear?' and 'Why would they buy my CDs?' And the process of answering these questions through music follows. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it backfires.

Bollywood music is definitely a big part of Indian music and can be a great way to introduce people to the sound. But I hope to continue to incorporate other types of Indian music into my work.

I'm continuing to learn more about music - it's an ocean, and you can never really say that you know everything. I'm grateful that I'm still living and making music among the greats.

Some things are very low profile, but if they excite me creatively, I accept them. Sometimes there are high-profile projects, and you have to do it. We all have human limitations. It is a painful decision to turn things down. Even accepting 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a decision that I had to sacrifice another project.

I basically love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that whether it's Indian or it's Western. But in India, I think it's limited to filler ?? music unfortunately. That's one thing I want to push in India where we have the infrastructure of an orchestra where you play Indian melodies with an orchestra and something different for a universal audience. It requires a lot of work from me.

While my mother wanted me to be a musician, I wanted to become an electronic engineer.

I was famous from the age of 13, and after a while you become immune to it - in a good way. You look at positives and what you can do with it.

Compared with other Indian film composers, I only write about six movies a year. Others write up to 60.

I joined the Madras Christian College but dropped out after three months. Telugu music director Ramesh Naidu asked me to assist him, and I did so for over a year. I did think of rejoining college, but by then, I was discovering the musician in me. I worked with Illaya Raja and Raj Koti and soon shifted to commercials. This led to movie offers.

I like to see a film and then start scoring it in my mind while doing something unrelated. You just grasp a film and start working, and something unpredictable comes out from a third element. The mind, the more active it is, the more productive it is.

I think I can get away, sometimes, with walking in the streets and not getting noticed. I like that. I want my work to get noticed, not me. And it's slowly getting there, which is good.

My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father's musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn't sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.

The more dollars the studio producers put in, the less freedom we have. If the budget hits $100m, they get scared - they'll take the existing score of a successful movie and expect composers to copy it, like wallpaper. The biggest challenge for any composer in Hollywood is to be as creative as possible within those boundaries.

I usually work on a film soundtrack for two years, turning in a song every few months, and that keeps my creative energy high, because I'm constantly rotating projects. The trick is to make sure I don't work too hard and get exhausted.

The more I compose, the more I know that I don't know it all. I think it's a good way to start. If you think you know it all, the work becomes a repetition of what you've already done.

When I travel with my kids abroad, I am not myself, but I'm more a father who wants to protect them. Sometimes, I am even aggressive about certain things and get surprised seeing myself like that: for instance, when people want to take pictures of them. I am fine if they want to take my pictures, but they are not public property.

My kids miss me when I'm away, but I don't mind living out of a suitcase. The U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Iraq... it's such a thrill meeting people of different cultures, learning about and from them. It's changed my perception about life, humanity and spirituality.

I like music that is able to stir my soul. My music is a spiritual exercise

I wanted to be part of something bigger

People Expect Something New From Me All The Time.And That's Good It Keeps Me On The Edge

The search is more important than the destination

While other creators make a big show of their art Mani Sir makes it look as though anyone can do what he does.

How we approached this was I wanted this to be personal in a way. It's not a big, epic Hollywood score but really personal and intimate, and we thought guitar would be the perfect instrument for him because he's young and he has an undying spirit and all that stuff and we went on that feeling totally.

When I initially read the script, it goes inside and comes out different things even without commenting on any stuff. And then, those pieces are taken out and then spread out through the movie.

It's a very simple process. He [Danny Boyl] comes in the tube (subway) and then he sits with me for 3 hours every evening and then I work on something. Then later, if he likes something, I put it even more perfectly. I tweak stuff. So this happened for 3 or 4 weeks and the music was done.

I went to London to do the stuff. I was like "What am I going to do? What's going to happen?" But then once you start working, you forget all that and you start enjoying what you're doing. Once you enjoy the process, you know that people are going to do the same thing. If you don't enjoy it and just do it like a job, then it's going to be feel that way. That's my theory of doing a movie.

Sometimes I intentionally cut it off. I just want to be in silence, especially when I'm traveling. I watch movies without sound.

That's the sound design. I watched it sixty times because we were constantly tweaking. The same thing comes twice, right? Once it comes in the beginning when he's about to discover that he needs to come out and one is the dream where he's flattered (??) and then he comes out. The last one, instead of going bigger, we made it smaller. We removed elements and thinned it out. So it doesn't drive him. He drives the music rather than the other way around.

That's a sound design thing but then we wanted to do music that would not disturb it and at the same time drive it.

I played a couple of ideas and then had this unusual texture underneath which was like this little granulated kind of pipe organ almost like a scratchy record which he started [inaudible] brilliantly. "Oh I love that song." And when things go fine, it's good. So he started loving that song and that song was used quite a lot in the movie which is very granulated stuff on the guitar.

Certain things are done intentionally opposite - like there's no sound at the end or synthesizers or all that stuff. Anything that drowns the movie, no. Anything that makes you sit up and watch it, yes. So, some are expecting a very sad theme going on.

That was a very different emotion and I felt Dido's words would be good and I had a template with my voice in it. Then, when he heard it, he wanted both our voices together in it and that's the scene when he sees the boy and then he gets charged to go on that final cutting effort.

My list would be Russia, Morocco, Turkey, and South Africa I'm doing which is somewhere I've wanted to go, Australia, Japan maybe, and China, if I have the energy to go and play at all those places.

My first experience of that was with my first movie which I did in India. And it was so different from other people. I find that "Oh my God." Every time the music is slow I feel that people are going to get up and go out. You get this nervousness. But, to my surprise, people starting singing the song even before it came in. They started singing along a week later, after release, which was very cool.

The best way would be education and kids and all that stuff and then education and working education comes through. Then I started a music school and the music school now teaches kids to play the violin and the viola.

I grew up on Bach and Beethoven and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff. That's the only reason I'm thinking of going on.

I think I would like to discover a new root where people don't get bored with people singing boring lines but something exciting. That'd be interesting.

These are the Rad (?) instruments that are dying out in India. So, it's going well and I think now we are increasing the number of kids we have taught and of course we are helping out with other things too. It's based in India now. [The idea is to] perfect it in one place and then we'll expand.

I've never watched Trainspotting. I just know it's a very critically acclaimed film. In fact, I've never watched any of Danny's movies [means before he met him]. I just worked with him and felt the energy of what he is about initially before I do something. In a way, I think that's why we have discovered each other rather than replicate something else.

I've been doing music for many years and after a point what is the motivation that drives you to compose and to do stuff? I did this song for the U.N., a fighting for poverty anthem. That's when I realized that I could do a foundation. And when I started the foundation, it was basically to fight poverty and to help - that kind of stuff.

What is good is what it's going to lead to, like the song "Jai Ho." If good numbers are going to come in the future, it bodes well for a lot of things. But then, who's going to maintain that. That's the question. So far they could never lead to an Indian song, like a normal film song in this that they can relate to.

I listen to everything. As I told you, sometimes I just want to shut off from music and be silent. Then I play a song and it's refreshing. It's almost like initializing yourself. Recently I was in South Africa doing a press day for my tour. I listened to this band called "Freshly Ground." They were doing a live gig there so that's the last thing I've heard.

I didn't see it coming at all. I just wanted to have this new experience with this team of Danny Boyle, Christian (Colson) and Simon (Beaufoy). It was like an excursion for me from my normal routine and the Indian movies I do and that helped.

I don't even know where mine [Oscar award] is. My mother has hidden it because everybody who comes in wants to take a photograph of it. So what she's done is she put it inside a suitcase somewhere.

I love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that, whether it's Indian or it's Western.

I am a big admirer of Sachin and his personality. He is a source of inspiration for the country and just looking at his photographs gives a lot of positive vibes.

There is only one of the two that can reside in our hearts, GOD or ego. If GOD is in ego is out.

Because when you work with a different team, the expectations are different and then you deliver in a very different way. You look back at it and you're proud of yourself. And when the same people come in and you do the same thing, it's boring. You could re-envision it again and again but when the new chemistry of ideas comes in, something happens as a team.

If a musician wants to blossom into a full-fledged person, it's not enough if he knows only classical music; nor it is enough if he's well-versed only in raagas and techniques. Instead, he should be a knowledgeable person interested in life and philosophy. In his personal life there should be, atleast in some corner of his heart, a tinge of lingering sorrow.

There were basically three themes. One was the sun theme which is the guitar when he'd get sun on his leg and it comes again in the end. And there's of course the lullaby which Dido sang, "If I Rise." And then there's this driving guitar which is the motivation theme.

There have been predictions that the world will come to an end on 21.12.12. But I look around me and I see so much scope for hope.

In my case dust has become Gold

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Obama, Thank you for sending me Christmas and New Year greetings yet again. Welcome back to India... Would have loved to host you at my concert in Baroda on the 26th!

Since I worked with Danny Boyle before on Slumdog Millionaire, we have great success and everything. So, when I first got the script and the screenplay of Simon (Beaufoy) and I was reading it, even before the shoot, some kind of sounds came into my mind and I put some stuff [down] and sent it to Danny when he was cutting the movie.

We didn't want to do that. It would have been a beautiful moment in the movie but it would have brought the movie down. So Danny's vision was perfect I think when he wanted it to be driven at the same time having this new emotion about this boy coming as a hallucination or like a déjà vu and as the future kid.

I love the voice - it’s the most perfect instrument ever heard. It’s God given.

It had a language. It's a very emotional language that only exists in India, that part of [inaudible] so we wanted to use that. I had two versions - one with my voice and one with the girl's voice. But he preferred the girl's voice and he preferred my voice with an [inaudible].

The music had to be rooted, and yet had to branch out,like the wild imagination of a child.

Music knows no barrier of age or culture. It isn’t about being politically correct or even making a statement. Music is what appeals to the ears and touches your soul.

My biggest dream to connect people through music has come true. In a world where there are enough reasons to separate us, the Oscars have unified us.

I want to go beyond the restrictions of language, religion and caste, and music is the only thing that allows me to do that.

In my opinion, everybody has the same soul from God and we are united by that. Outside, our bodies are different, our faces are different, but inside we are all the same, we share the same feelings of sadness, love, pain My music comes out of these feelings. Whether it is Japanese music, African, Qawalli, or any other form of music, if it touches your heart it becomes important for me.