I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.

I'd love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music.

Music is the emotional life of most people.

The spiral in a snail's shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way galaxy, and it's also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA. It's the same ratio that you'll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world.

I found music to be the therapy of choice.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

City people live the city. We live in L.A., New York, we live in places where it's chaotic and you never know what's gonna happen. And that's the music - you never know what's gonna happen.

In a weird kind of way, music has afforded me an idealism and perfectionism that I could never attain as me.

That was a time when I did love music, I couldn't get enough of what was going on. Maybe it was Nirvana that brought me back. I guess it was a comfort because something that sounded so right - and non-commercial - had become so influential, so immediately.