I was an accomplished junior tennis player up to around fourteen years old. At fourteen or fifteen I made the decision to venture off to make my life 100% music.

You cannot do what I do for a living without having a thick skin.

Composers can do things that weren't allowed in the 17th century. Until we had composers like Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff to break the rules.

I have a huge record and cd collection of all kinds of great classical, jazz and all music but I find the internet very accessible and quick.

Sometimes it's very hard to turn off my brain especially when I have an eighteen hour day. I try to stop working by 10 or 11pm but you know sometimes there is nothing I can do about it.

There is competition. It's almost like I'm back in tennis competing in a way. There are usually about twenty composers vying for the number one spot for a big or medium film.

The thing I learned from playing tennis is that I know what competition is. I can handle rejection.

When I lost a tennis match that made me upset or hurt emotionally I would find myself going to the piano and playing for hours. It was my place of refuge and solace.

When you play competitive tennis you are competing against someone else and you have to win. Playing music I didn't have to win I had to become better within myself.

Anyaele Sam Chiyson Leadership Law of Advancement: Notable leaders chart the course of action that causes other leaders to progress toward reaching a goal and raising the status of power.

Didn’t anyone ask you where your parents are?""They asked. Especially about my parents.""What did you tell them?""I said I ate them.""Jesus, Rosa.

My children don't look Hispanic.

I sold a book six years after I left an MFA program. In between, there was a lot of endurance of poverty and a lot of fighting off doubt. It's all a part of the process of being or becoming a writer.

Good web text has a lot in common with good print text. It's plain, concise, concrete and 'transparent': even on a personal site the text shouldn't draw attention to itself, only to its subject.

Winning means everything...You show me a good loser and I'll show a loser.

She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore.

I will not allow my daughters to learn foreign languages because one tongue is sufficient for a woman.

To compromise simply means that you go a tiny bit below what you know is right.

I don't really see a need to retire as long as I am having fun.