Smaller incidents in my life made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.
One hundred guitarists making lots of noise would not be something you'd want to listen to.
Occasionally I hear a band that blows me away. For instance, there's a musician in Oakland named Weasel Walter who has a band called the Flying Luttenbachers. Go see the Flying Luttenbachers when they're in your town. He's one of the greatest rock composers who ever lived, and he's struggling and living like a poverty-stricken hermit.
I could create music that sounded as strange as any electronic music, because you see, my opinion about electronic music is that the real composer is the guy who invented the instrument. Pressing buttons is not composing. Composing is about creating something.
I really feel instrumental music can speak - can contain tremendous amounts of information - but it's speaking to your subconscious.
It scares me that people are going to stop writing music. I don't mean music that has to be physically written down, but they'll stop using their brain which is without a doubt the most powerful tool that you could have in any art.
Music is about imagination. It's about thought. It's about creating something from nothing.
Victory is the normal experience of a Christian; defeat should be the abnormal experience.
Never expect justice in this world. That is not part of God's plan. Everybody thinks that if they don't get it, they're some kind of odd man out. And it's not true. Nobody gets justice - people just get good luck or bad luck.
I think I've been really lucky to keep my career so varied, and to be open. There's safety in repetition, but there's also a trap there.
A friend of mine tells me that a Beethoven symphony can solve for him a problem of conduct. I've no doubt that it does so simply by giving him a sense of the tragedy and the greatness of human destiny, which makes his personal anxieties seem small, which throws them into a new proportion.