I always try to work with people who are better than me, so I can learn more.

My most powerful memory was hearing Earl Scruggs on 'The Beverly Hillbillies' as a 5 or 6 year old. That sound just blew me away, shook my head up.

It doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring.

I think I'm getting better at being verbal. I used to have a lot of problems with it. I had my own little demons that I was fighting, and I used the banjo as an escape.

I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.

Sometimes you can fix something that went wrong with what you do next and make it better than it would have been if it hadn't gone wrong, as an improviser, and I do know how to do that.

Everybody should have a documentary made about themselves. It's amazing what you see and what you learn.

There's a lot of hip-hop that would be great with a banjo in it. It would just groove like crazy, and I hope I get to be one of the guys who does that, because it's coming. It's coming.

Being from New York, I wonder why am I inspired by bluegrass and Earl Scruggs? But when I look at the whole history of the banjo, I feel really good about it, including the Earl Scruggs part.

I learned that I'm so busy with what I'm doing, so focused on what I'm doing, that I miss a lot of opportunities for interacting with people.

I think the musical evolution I've gone through has come from all the work with the material.

It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.

Love is the light of life, Happiness is the delight of life.

There are subtle truths buried in every make-believe. You never know where you might find one.

The disgrace of one's people brings sorrow to the Nobel minded.

We can't simply scare people into giving up their rights, on the basis, oh, this protects us from terrorism.

What is a thousand years? Time is short for one who thinks, endless for one who yearns.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

History showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith.

Two of the most powerful words you can hear someone say are ‘me too.’

I like pop music. I consider rock 'n' roll to be a branch of pop music.