“Rhythm must have meaning.”

“Rhythm is a conception, not a physical reality. It is true that, to be realized in music, rhythm must be marked by some sort of sound, but this sound is not itself the rhythm.”

“You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.”

“Rhythm? Not only do I have to defy gravity. I have to have rhythm while I do it?”

“Somewhere between banging on logs and the invention of M.I.D.I. technology we have made a terrible wrong turn. We must have ridden right past our stop. We should have stepped down off the train at that moment when rhythm and harmony and technology all culminated to a single Otis Redding whine. That moment of the truest, most genuine expression of what it means to be human.”

“We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”