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

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.

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.

I did take composition lessons when I was in high school, so I wrote piano pieces. I wrote some chamber music. I don't think any of that was particularly interesting.

Rough work with a soul will always be open to all, including condemnation & reviling, while fine work housing emptiness is closed to all insults & is easily ivied over with paid praises

Write like you speak with the 'rhythms of human speech, ' as William Zinsser said, and in as few words as possible. Use action verbs to carry water.

Death is the only thing we haven't succeeded in completely vulgarizing.

The truth is that America has been closely divided politically for quite some time. That was reflected in some of the challenges I had with the Republican Congress.

I'm not the kind of guy who wants to be on a pedestal.

I'm being compared to the impossible. I never saw Mays, Aaron or Clemente play. What about the people I face every day? Tim Raines is the best? Mattingly is the best? Why not compare me to my peers?

Scientists and creationists are always at odds, of course.

Everywhere I go, people know who I am.

If Bush wins, I'm going to leave the country and spend the rest of my life in France.

Never cosign a loan. Once you have cosigned, you cannot get out of it - even on your deathbed.