I like to hear melodies that go from one extreme to the next- saxophone to a bell to a whistle, for instance.

If you listen to nature, all the sounds are done in a confident way. I'm trying to do that.

I remember times when the whole music scene was just flourishing.

I'm approaching a period in my life though where I'd like to be totally absorbed into music, doing concerts, writing something. Basically, that IS what I am doing.

I always try to think of a vocabulary to match different musical situations.

I've always been interested in shaping music in odd ways, with odd riffs and that's been probably something that I've continued on with my studies with improvisation as I'm working with people.

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

I don't like to box myself in when I'm composing.

Be careful with the kind of company you keep, because behaviors and habits are very contagious.

If you want to talk about mistakes, every country has mistakes, every government has mistakes, every person has mistakes. When you have a war, you have more mistakes. That's the natural thing.

It is possible to be happy without having perfect health . . . Thank goodness my happiness doesn't come from my joints, but from my heart.

Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.

You're not really free until you're free from trying to please everybody.

If science were communism, was it also not possible that communism could itself become a science?

Ah, what a grudge I owe physicians! what mummery is their art!

Just because you can't see the air, doesn't mean you stop breathing. And just because you can't see God, doesn't mean you stop believing

We are too weak to discover the truth by reason alone

I am very into genealogy and heritage, and that's how I started writing.