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!

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.

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!

To be nice to people and make them happy - that's my philosophy in life.

Writing- the profession in which you stare at a computer screen, stare out the window, type a few words, then curse repeatedly.

Before proving it to someone else, I had to be able to prove it to myself.

....my sacred landscape is the foothills of the stars - I go there often to sleep ...

Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.

We must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature, or go insane.

If I'm bringing joy to people and entertaining people as an actor, then I should be grateful for that and act accordingly, you know?

But I've really learned you don't have to fit in. No matter where you go, you're always going to be you and if they don't like you for who you are, then what's the point of being someone else?

if you don't think that all life is improvisation, then you haven't been paying attention. Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.

Sometimes being a brother is even better than being a superhero.

I don't know what kind of God the rest of y'all are serving, but the God I serve says, 'Mary, you need to be the hottest thing this year, and I'm gonna make sure you're doing that.'