I don't really want to force anyone to feel a specific way, but if they can keep their body and mind "floating" with my music, that pleases me.

I have always liked black and white! It is simple and the colour of the piano.

Nobody wants to experience sad events but people like to listen to sad songs. That's the beauty of music.

The way to respect all the people I love is to eat the music, have it in my blood and bones, and try to explore it in as much different ways as possible to create my own identity.

Every day is different and improvised. Sometimes, a song can lead to a completely different adventure. You can't control it.

I started to listen to Japanese jazz musicians when I went to high school. Some people I listened to were Yosuke Yamashita, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Sadao Watanabe.

Work hard! Just keep working hard until you can do something you want to do! We all progress at different speeds and in different ways, so be patient and keep working hard!

The beautiful thing about music is that even so-called negative emotions like anger, sadness, frustration, when they come through the filter of music, they all become beautiful.

Everybody improvises without noticing it. Life is about improvising. You can't control what happens in your life, I mean, you don't know what can happen in your life today. So you somehow improvise.

Challenges are the key in life. You always have to challenge yourself and try to get to different states.

Everything is inspiring! It could be fine art or a conversation I have with somebody!

God needs your obedience

The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.

Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you'd build a castle at the beach. You're just taking your hands and you're mounting up sand.

What was a life anyway? An accumulation of small shelves of incident.

But where do we come up with this notion of a woman in which the less space you take up, the more you're worth?

Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible.

The question before the advanced nations is not whether they can afford to help the developing nations, but whether they can afford not to do so.

The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.

I have a really sweet daughter. She wants to hug all the other kids. I didn't teach her to be sweet. It has nothing to do with me.

Well I think that the mind of a serial killer and the mind of the detectives represent the duality we face as people.