“James wrote music all the time, day after day. He did this before Titanic, he did it during Titanic, and he did it afterwards. And he worked with many directors. So, the creation of the music was quietly in the background of our lives and just a part of life. It was interwoven with all of the other music James wrote.”

“Titanic was a world unto itself. The film and the music were embedded in a long period of creation that was largely invisible to me. They inhabited the minds and hearts of their creators,” Sara explained to us.

“If I had one thing to say about the entirety of the film I would say that it was not of this world. It was really of a world that came from its creators and lived within them. Somehow, they managed to manifest this imaginary reality and bring it into and allow it to become part of the real world. I was not part of its creation. I was just present at its manifestation.”

“The Academy Award ceremony was just part of the release of Titanic into the world and the response of the audience to film, the music, and the song.”

“Its arrival into the real world was exhilarating and overwhelming in its magnitude. It generated enormous attention and public interest in our very private life. I think it was both wonderful and gratifying but also a huge influx of energy into a very sensitive and private man. It both affirmed his gift and exposed his gift. For someone as private as James was, who spent most of his days and nights in his studio pulling notes and orchestral chords out of the atmosphere, it was a huge public intrusion, in a sense, into a very gentle being. It is my belief that as gratifying as the experience was and as much as it deeply fulfilled James’s reason for being in this world, and by that I don’t mean it’s box office success, but its success at reaching into the hearts of others, the experience was overwhelming in its magnitude.

James was a very gentle being. He had a kind of intuitive communication with the world around him and for which he needed a protected environment. I have always felt that the magnitude of the public response to Titanic was, in spite of its singularity as a box office sensation and its provision of an awareness of James’s work to a much larger audience, almost too much. I feel like it changed James. My experience of it was that it was an intrusion into our lives and its power rippled through our family and our lives and disturbed and distorted them. Dealing with that level of public accolade and notoriety is challenging and, in many ways, we were unprepared. We lived a very secluded life. Eventually we all adjusted but I don’t think James was quite the same ever again. He was warier, and more anxious and more reclusive. It took many years before he relaxed back into his old self. In a sense I would say it caused him to age and it is for me, the line between his youth, and the rest of his life.”