I started playing the piano when I was about two and got a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore when I was five. But I left when I was 11.

Take a different route to the coffee shop to see what you can see and hear. When we get in a routine, we can become zombie-like and shut down. It's about discipline. You have to push yourself.

I'm a tomato freak, but sometimes you have to get it in ketchup form for people to be able to open to tomatoes.

If all I can say is I'm not in this swamp, I'm not in this swamp then there is not a rope in front of me and there is not an alligator behind me and there is not a girl sitting at the edge eating a hot dog and if I believe that, then dying would be the only answer because then Death couldn't come and say Peachy to me anymore and after all she has a brother who believes in hope.

You have to really respect your path, or you will lose your mind.

There is an energy that you carry when you're nurturing another life where you're protecting first - and once you know that cub is out of the way of the hunter's gun, you can be a little more daring.

Sometimes listening to music can motivate you. It can. But if you're a musician, that isn't always the way to get new ideas because you don't want to take somebody else's ideas. You need to find your own. So if you go to different artistic mediums, whether it's dance or it's visual arts or films or books, stories, sometimes it gets you hearing things, hearing progressions that you wouldn't come up with if you were just listening to other music because you don't want to copy progressions you've just heard.