The goal in life is to live young, have fun, and arrive at your final destination as late as possible, with a smile on your face.

When you experience resistance, you find the lessons that you are meant to learn

Every morning you have a choice. Are you going to be a positive thinker or a negative thinker? Positive thinking will energize you.

It's very unlikely you're a genius, but, if you're ready to work at it hard and you want to listen to music all the time and you want to learn about it and you want to be around the people who do it, you'll find your own way.

When you believe, the impossible becomes possible. What you believe will become what is true. Your optimism today will determine your level of success tomorrow. Don’t look at your challenges; look up and look out into the future. Don’t focus on your circumstances. Focus on the right beliefs that will help you build your success.

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

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.