I almost never these days sit down with a CD or my laptop and just listen to a piece with a score. I probably would do that while I'm exercising.

Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.

I like the idea of imagining a sound and feeling a sound and then having it come out through your body, through an instrument. That's an important way to make music.

My work on hyper instruments started with simple instruments, like the piano.

The one obvious thing is that the devices are so good now that you can also see their limitations extremely well.

My message is to forget about dichotomies. The Brain Opera is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voices - so I do consider it an opera.

Why does every society seem to want to make music when it often seems like kind of a frill.

Nobody talks about music as having intrinsic meaning, how it engages the mind.

Works of art should be stimulating. They should wake people up rather than acting like a sedative.

There's many reason music exists and we are beginning to no only understand that, but measure that.

There's just an incredibly rich and interesting relationship between our listening to music and the way our minds engage.

my godis not as unreachable asthey'd like you to thinkmy god is beating inside us infinitely

Toilet paper was either bleached white or unbleached gray, yet there were more than a dozen kinds of ketchup and about 30 brands of cookies. I approved of their priorities.

Some men storm imaginary Alps all their lives, and die in the foothills cursing difficulties which do not exist.

I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.

if somebody at least listens it not too bad

I realised it was only me who was stopping myself from living my life.

No matter what you are currently able to do, creativity can make you capable of more.

More than 150 heads of state attended the UN Summit, giving New Yorkers a chance to get in touch with prejudices they didn't even know they had.

It feels like each time we are beginning at the beginning, in a really exciting way.

I admired what my students were writing, but I think their improvement doesn't directly result from me but from being in a class, being with each other.