I never liked opera growing up. I always liked chamber music or solo music even more than orchestral music.

Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.

I like the idea of imagining a sound and feeling a sound and then having it come out through your body, through an instrument. That's an important way to make music.

My work on hyper instruments started with simple instruments, like the piano.

The one obvious thing is that the devices are so good now that you can also see their limitations extremely well.

My message is to forget about dichotomies. The Brain Opera is an opera, even if it does not tell a story in the usual way. It is a psychological journey with voices - so I do consider it an opera.

Why does every society seem to want to make music when it often seems like kind of a frill.

Nobody talks about music as having intrinsic meaning, how it engages the mind.

Works of art should be stimulating. They should wake people up rather than acting like a sedative.

There's many reason music exists and we are beginning to no only understand that, but measure that.

There's just an incredibly rich and interesting relationship between our listening to music and the way our minds engage.

Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.

IMPRESSIONS

I have never opened with the QP - on principle.

I was very much a product of the public-school system. There was only one other kid in my class who had parents not involved in the stock market or law.

There are battered husbands. Apparently this happens when the woman is real big, the man is very small, and they each drink a quart of whiskey a day.

Salvation, O the joyful sound! 'Tis pleasure to our ears; A sov'reign balm for ev'ry wound, A cordial for our fears.

I had things with numbers - because I love numbers - but it's not something I'm proud of. I'm proud that I was able to send them away, because you're much more present.

I am running because I love my country and Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama are ruining it. It is time to take our country back and I am asking you to join me in this fight.

Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the hands of statesmen.