Music originally had a social function. You were in church, in a concert hall, a marching band; you were dancing. I'm concerned that music could be too separated from its roots and just become a pleasure-giving experience, like a drug.

The same areas which are active in listening to music are also active when you imagine music, and this includes the motor areas, too. That explains why earlier, even though I was only thinking of the mazurka, I was thinking in terms of movement.

Music is...a fundamental way of expressing our humanity - and it is often our best medicine.

Music has a bonding power, it's primal social cement

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.

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.

People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever. And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world.