I learned that when something just has to be said to move the discussion along, or broaden it or deepen it, if I can just keep my mouth shut for five minutes a student will say it. So for me a lot of teaching is about keeping my mouth shut.

I learned that when something just has to be said to move the discussion along, or broaden it or deepen it, if I can just keep my mouth shut for five minutes a student will say it. So for me a lot of teaching is about keeping my mouth shut.

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.”

I never find myself even catching lyrics until something in the sound has taken me captive. Thinking about anything else is just the pleasurable byproduct of wow.