It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?

Anybody can play. The note is only 20 percent. The attitude of the motherfucker who plays it is 80 percent.

It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.

If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow.

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.

Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.

If you sacrifice your art because of some woman, or some man, or for some color, or for some wealth, you can't be trusted.

The burnt-off connectors and shadows where Ravan once filled my spaces— those, I think, are the sensations of grief.

No one is as brave, as adventurous or as skillful as D'Artagnan, without at the same time being inclined to be a dreamer.

I try to pray everyday or every night to thank my Personal Lord for all that he has given me, all that he is giving me, and all that he will give me.

Laughter is a gift everyone should open.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

I'm not a stickler for truth. To me, lying in poetry is much more fun. I'm against lying in life, in principle, in any other activity except poetry.

Bad things can happen, and often do--but they only take up a few pages of your story; and anyone can survive a few pages.

Tennis is a funny game; unbelievable highs and the lows are just as low.

It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.

Make your own rules or be a slave to another man's.