If we're not actively making things better, chances are we're making them worse.

Robotic correctness is the last thing judges want to see or hear

. .the most crucial ingredient by far for success in music is . . .what happens in the practice room.

Music, the most abstract and uncanny art, is an eternal river of sound moving through time. We can free ourselves from whatever may be holding us back, and join that flowing river.

Mistakes are . . . immensely useful. . . they show us . . . where we are right now and what we need to do next

Music study presents a natural, here-and-now route to selfknowledge and self-integration.

Learning itself is a fulfilling adventure at all points in the process. In fact, psychologists have listed learning as one of the basic, universal joys of human experience.

If you have played "six times wrong, one time right" the problem is not quite corrected.

[perfectionism leads to] a tendency to apologize preemptively for one's efforts, knowing from experience that there's sure to be something wrong with them.

Don't attribute mishaps to a lapse in concentration - if you missed the note you don't know it.

Much music teaching seems more concerned with controlling the student than with encouraging the student's own impulses.

Let him who would move the world first move himself.

A musician has to find a way to make his music mean something special - spiritually or however you can

Human misery is so appalling nowadays that if we allowed ourselves to dwell on it we should only add imaginary miseries of our own to the real miseries of others without doing them any good.

Anyone who is more interested in human beings than in the rules is a threat to the system.

There should be less talk. . . . What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough.

I was kind of just too lazy to take my money out of the bank until I saw how Citi Bank responded to Occupy Wall Street.

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.

I'm not going to pretend I'm someone I'm not. I'm not going to put on a pre-fab identity.

America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.

I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.