“Have compassion for everyone you meet, even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.”

“Go down." It seemed obvious. "You have to go down before you can come out - that's how these things always work.”

“Wherever it left us, we were barely learning to live with itwhen here came Flannery O'Connor and Hank Williamsto tell us that no one has ever been lovedthe way everybody wants to be loved,and that's hard. That's hard.--last stanza of How Step by Step We Have Come to Understand”

“It's a wonderful thing, for half an hour, to have money in your pocket and piss it away like a drunken sailor. You feel as though the world is yours. And the best part of it is, you don't know what to do with it.”

“have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.”

“Having clear goals is a way of shaping your future. Where you are today, is partly a result of what you did or didn’t do in the past. Where you might be in five years time, will be as a consequence of what you do or don’t do over the next five years.”

“I believe music is a place everyone of us can go to. I don’t care who you are, where you were born, what you do with your life. Everyone can come here in music and be equal.”