You have to be born with it. You can't even buy it. If you could buy it, they'd have it at the next Newport Festival.

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.

I don’t know what understanding myself is. I don’t look inside.I don’t believe I exist behind myself.

Stop for a moment... let's see what you have skipped!

He was a six and a half foot scowl.(on Rachmaninov)

I'm fully aware that things that resonate and become real hits are the exception to the rule, so much so that I've wired myself for failure.

The 2010 global gender gap report by the World Economic Forum shows that countries with better gender equality have faster-growing, more competitive economies.

What?” Simon looked alarmed. ”I‘m not really sleeping with your mom, you know. I was just trying to get your attention. Not that your mom isn’t a very attractive woman for her age.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.

The Most Blessed Sacrament is Christ made visible. The poor sick person is Christ again made visible.

He was pushing fifty, with a face life had chewed on, and long wisps of graying hair parted low on one side and combed over his balding pate.

The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.