“The reason I love 'Slumdog' is because the music is all world cultures, all celebrating. In India, I know people feel other film scores [of mine] are closer to their hearts. But when you are doing a film, it's very important to make the film look like one full piece of artwork. I think scoring 'Slumdog' with every kind of music possible, from Chinese to hip-hop to M. I. A.... was really fresh ground for me.”

“There are some directors who actually fear the possible success of music. They fear that the audience or the critics will think the film has worked because there was a very good music score.”

“How do I pick a role? Well, primarily I think I would like to be part of a film that's progressive as well as entertaining, you know? Because in India we have a huge amount of audience that is not educated, and they really look up to films… So I think it's important to do a film… that's entertaining but has a message. And after that I'd like to do films that are different for me -- if I'm doing a love story then I want to do a war film, if I'm doing a war film then I want to do a story about an un-wed mother. I think variety is the spice of life.”

“It could have been extremely boring to write musical scores for only westerns of horror films. It was really exciting for me to work in all these various genres.”

“Yes, in the sense that the negative is like the composer’s score. Then, using that musical analogy, the print is the performance. (Paraphrased as "Film is the score and the print is the performance.")”

“When I read the script for GODZILLA VS. SPACE GODZILLA, it reminded me of teenage idol films. In addition, the movie was going to have rap music in it. So, I thought, "Well, this is not my world, so I better not score this one."”

“Mr. Honda would always give me complete control over the score. Even though he was very knowledgeable about music, he would always say to me, "Mr. Ifukube, I know very little about music, so I'll allow you to make all of the decisions about the score." Mr. Honda was a very generous man. All of the other directors with whom I worked would stay in the control booth while the scores for their films were being recorded. Only Mr. Honda would come out of the booth and stand beside me while I was conducting. He was always very curious.”

“You read reviews by top reviewers of films that not only had remarkably interesting scores, but films whose effectiveness was absolutely enhanced, and frequently created by the music, yet the reviewers seem unaware that their emotions and their nervous reactions to the films have been affected by the scoring. This is a serious flaw. Any film reviewer owes it to himself, and the public, to take every element of the film into account”

“I like Hip-Hop music. I like electronic music. I like, you know - I can get a lot of energies from the young people.”

“Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock, in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn’t their parents’. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.”