If you are complaining you can't be thinking about or creating what you do want.

I think [Phil Wood] didn't suffer fools gladly, but he loved supporting young people that loved the music.

I'm reaching a certain level [at school] that I had been aspiring to with all these incredibly advanced classical peers around me that I had been trying to be able to hang with them a little bit.

I wasn't expecting [the Monk competition] would necessarily do that. So I just did what I did and some good things continued to happen and some doors continued to open and that kind of led me into the different associations that I developed in my 30s and some records that I've made on ArtistShare over the last 10 years or so.

Dust on gold doesn't change the nature of gold.

Particularly, in my situation, I needed a way out of where I was. So music was that.

The best thing you can do is just go and have fun with [competition].