“None of us lie or guard our secrets when we sing, and India is a nation of singers whose first love is the kind of song we turn to when crying just isn’t enough.”

“We all have our la-la-la song. The thing we do when the world isn't singing a nice tune to us. We sing our own nice tune to drown out ugly.”

“There are times when we need the rocket fuel of singing and dancing to power us through an act of blind faith. Falling in love is one of those times, when we need to move into a phase of enchantment with enough force so that when things cool and the air clears, we are locked into that person, that love. We fall in love and we sing as we walk down the street; we turn up the music and dance.”

“Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas, chinese operas,jazz, the blues: that such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span of a human hand from which we can build our cathedrals of sound, is alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love. Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation. We don't have much of it. Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world. ”

“The truth is, when our mothers held us, rocked us, stroked our heads -none of us ever got enough of that. We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of - unconditional love, unconditional attention. Most of us didn't get enough.”

“But we, with our dreaming and singing,Ceaseless and sorrowless we!The glory about us clingingOf the glorious futures we see,Our souls with high music ringing:O men! it must ever beThat we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,A little apart from ye.We are afar with the dawningAnd the suns that are not yet high,And out of the infinite morningIntrepid you hear us cry —How, spite of your human scorning,Once more God's future draws nigh,And already goes forth the warningThat ye of the past must die.Great hail! we cry to the comersFrom the dazzling unknown shore;Bring us hither your sun and your summers;And renew our world as of yore;You shall teach us your song's new numbers,And things that we dreamed not before:Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,And a singer who sings no more.”