When I am composing, the sounds are leading me to the way I want them to organize.

Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening.

Listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as listening

I am also interested in music expanding consciousness. By expanding consciousness, I mean that old patterns can be replaced with new ones.

Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears

Listening is selecting and interpreting and acting and making decisions.

Working in theoretical systems can take away the juice. It can also be very beautiful, but when you're trying to satisfy a theoretical principle rather than a sonic reality, then it can become dry.

Deep listening is experiencing heightened awareness or expanded awareness of sound and of silence, of quiet, and of sounding - making sounds.

We think about sitting in a space and hearing some music by having our ears pointed forward towards the musicians sitting opposite us. I'm really not following that paradigm at all.

Everybody improvises their way through every day. And so I do that with music.

I feel that students always learn more from each other than they do from their professor. They learn by doing and not by trying to soak up information from one person.

A person's disposition should serve as a narrative of their lives not the pigmentation of their skin.

Strange how blind people are! They are horrified by the torture chambers of the Middle Ages, but their arsenals fill them with pride!

There's four sides to every story... If these walls could talk, they'd probably still ignore me.

Culture is not a surface phenomenon, it is our very care

I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

Nothing keeps me awake at night. I keep other people awake at night.

Well, I don't think just because people are in a relationship that they're happy. I don't think relationships necessarily make people happy. You just are happy or you're not happy.

Honor is what you know about yourself.

Colonel Parker asked Henry and me to come to Elvis' suite and have breakfast. There were at least five policemen stationed up there. He was talking on the telephone.

We do not imitate, but are a model to others.