We must return optimism to our parenting. To focus on the joys not the hassles the love not the disappointments the common sense not the complexities.

We're living in a time when parenting is not at all mirroring the way I was parented. For me I just followed my parents around on their errands when they were busy on the phone I was quiet. It's a different kettle of fish these days: They run the house and you listen to their music and you go to their appointments.

Each of us has a very rich nature and can look at things objectively from a distance and at the same time can have something more personal to say about them. I am trying to look at the world and at myself from many different points of view. I think many poets have this duality.

Many artists and scholars have pointed out that ultimately art depends on human nature.

My illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity love brotherhood and relationships that I never understood and probably never would have. So from that standpoint there is some truth and good in everything.

I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence there's innocence contained in you but there's also innocence in the process of being lost.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry getting the music out of the way and having only words the spoken word and then see what happens.

I write music with an exclamation point!

Pop is a little bit theatrical. That's the whole vibe. That's the point - is that it's great music great melodies great hooks. But on top of it it's a presentation. There's a showmanship about it. And that's why I wanted to be a pop star.

Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony.

Beyond a certain point the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours.

The thing about my music is there really is no point.

Linguistic philosophers continue to argue that probably music is not a language that is in the philosophical debate. Another point of view is to say that music is a very profound language.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very very rich and complex and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

Anything I do has to be directly related to my music. If it isn't I don't really see a point to it.

The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it's not going to happen. I'm fully confident that copyright for instance will no longer exist in 10 years.

When music fails to agree to the ear to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses then it has missed the point.

Nevertheless the passions whether violent or not should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust and music even in situations of the greatest horror should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it and thereby always remain music.

If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.

I don't live in the past at all I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

In America we have so many movies and so much media about the Islamic world the sub-continental world but it's not a conversation it's a monologue. It's always from one point of view. 'If we don't tell our own stories no one will tell them' is my mantra.

I want to work with great directors. I want to work on good material with good actors. I've probably done 20 movies at this point and a lot of independents. It's been an incredible ride and I love it and I'm just going to keep going and doing what I'm doing.

I want to make movies about my country from my point of view.

I want to do movies that I'm proud of where my kids at some point can see and I can feel comfortable sitting there watching it with them. And just that move people. That make people feel a little bit better about themselves when they leave the theatre.