“By being natural and sincere, one often can create revolutions without having sought them.”

“Happiness is the secret to all beauty. There is no beauty without happiness.”

“A woman's perfume tells more about her than her handwriting. ”

“Some may see the tortured existence of the musician as one where he's practicing like hell and being alone, I see it quite differently. Having three children, beautiful as it is, burdens you with terrible things often, with strong decision and sleepless nights. Tis is real life. And then, of course - this is getting into very personal things- I see many ­­­­­­parts of me that are what would be called the "dark side". I had a happy childhood, but what was happening to my family, my parents, and also the dark tings that happpened-between them and where they come from, the war- there is a lot that i could not put in easy words. But it's what most of us carry. It's just whether you have the ability to voice it in the music, whether you allow yourself to be touched by thing , to be receptive to other people, to be in the pain of a composer.”

“Many of us can maybe sometimes imagine sounds, or have some musical ideas. But to have them consistenly building whole works, and to have the means of transforming something that's in your ear into handcrafted written notes that give back what you heard and what you felt - I find it just utterly miraculous.”

“When white people envision their perfect home, it always has hardwood floors. In fact, most white people would prefer a dirt floor over wall-to-wall carpeting, because to them it would have the same level of cleanliness and probably fewer germs.White people are petrified of germs, and when they look at a carpet all they can see is everything that has ever been spilled, tracked in, or shaken loose into the carpet fibers. But more disgusting to white people is that wall-to-wall carpeting reminds them of suburban homes, motel rooms, and the horrible apartments that they have visited or lived in over the years. It has no soul. Only germs.Hardwood floors, on the other hand, are easily cleaned and give a sense of character to a place, since they are often the original flooring in older buildings. It is a well-known white fantasy to purchase a home or apartment that has disgusting carpet and then to pull it up to reveal a beautiful hardwood floor underneath.”

“This was the book I read over and over. I really felt so in tune with them- I knew all the dates of their lives, what they had been doing, whre they had been. They were always my heroes, creating something fantastic against all odds, and against their real life.”