I would listen to something on the radio and try to tap out the melody, then the harmonies.

I would listen to something on the radio and try to tap out the melody, then the harmonies.

I have a very strange melodic gift: melodies come to me effortlessly.

My father had left behind an old piano. My sister was already going to school, my mother was out working, and I stayed at home alone with my adorable grandmother who understood nothing I said. It was so boring that I stayed at the piano all day long, and that saved my life.

Here is how I work: when I think that a film needs to have a principal theme, I search for a melody.

So I write melodies - thirty, forty, fifty - then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide.

To play piano is a significant part of my life, my existence. It fulfills a very physical & spiritual need for me.

In January we start saving money, getting out of credit card debt, funding our retirement accounts, and we're doing wonderful. Then, every single year like clockwork, starting in November, all of you fall into this trap that says, 'I have to buy this gift... I can't show up at this party and not have something for everybody.'

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation hard work learning from failure.

A cookbook is a moment in time because, otherwise, you look back at the end of the day, and all the meals have been eaten, and the experience is gone.

If you clean the floor with love, you have given the world an invisible painting.

Embrace change. True success can be defined by your ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

I never felt the GDR was my home country.

Just because you know umpteen billion scales, it doesn't mean you have to use them all in a solo.

Once taken off one task without completing the transaction, the mind continues to seek closure. Fight to stay focused on the task at hand.

Of course I treat myself every now and then. Once a month I might have pizza and red wine and maybe a dessert, but that's it.

I don't mind not looking conventionally - you know, attractive if that's what the part requires.

I don't focus much on video. I watch here and there, perhaps two or three of my opponent's fights. That gives me a good idea of his style.

Conventional forms of narrative allow for different points of view, but for this book I wanted a structure whereby each of the main characters contributed a distinctive version of the story.

No, there's not much competition between puppeteers in general because everybody's working their own style.

When we stop running up huge budget deficits and start acting responsibly in Washington, we will provide small-business owners with the certainty they need to put Americans back to work.

I started bands at a pretty young age and played with my friends back in Detroit. I've always known that I wanted to do this. It was all I was ever interested in doing. I never had, outside of music, any extracurricular activities that I took part in.

I really love Robert Duvall, who I think is maybe the best American actor. I love Robert Duvall because the ability that he has to change and do the most amazing work.

There was never anything else I wanted to pursue. It was always theater, and movies are a fairly new thing.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

I could never live a nonproductive life and I feel that I have lived a productive life as far as I want to in terms of this company that I have for so many years.

You ask people what their ethnicity is, and a lot of Scots-Irish people either don't know or if they know it they just don't acknowledge it. It's not something they really identify with. They're just plain old Americans, plain vanilla. I don't think they are a self-conscious voting bloc.

Your dharma is what kind of work you should be doing what kind of people you should associate with whether you should have a teacher or not. Dharma encompasses all things and it is specific to the individual.

Guns do kill. Unlike cars, that is all they do.

I became a professional musician and played all kinds of music. I played bluegrass, I played classical music, and for many years, I played jazz.

The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment when you are between asleep and awake when you dont know the difference between reality and fantasy when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality and it really happened.