The power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication.

It is easy to recollect the good things of life, the times when one's heart rejoices and expands, when everything is enfolded in kindness and love; it is easy to recollect the fineness of life-how noble one was, how generous one felt, what courage one showed in the face of adversity.

Eccentricity is like having an accent. It's what "other" people have.

Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.

Enhancement not only allows the possibilities of a healthy fullness and exuberance, but of a rather ominous extravagance, aberration, monstrosity ... This danger is built into the very nature of growth and life. Growth can become over-growth, life 'hyper-life' ... The paradox of an illness which can present as wellness - as a wonderful feeling of health and well-being, and only later reveal its malignant potentials - is one of the chimaeras, tricks and ironies of nature.

I think there is no culture in which music is not very important and central. That's why I think of us as a sort of musical species.

If we have youth, beauty, blessed gifts, strength, if we find fame, fortune, favor, fulfillment, it is easy to be nice, to turn a warm heart to the world.