As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.

Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.

People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'

One of the things I love about music is live performance.

As a musician I'm kind of nomadic, Waldo-like. I show up in different places, and I'm witness to unbelievable things.

Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.

The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.