The future will be the child of the past and the present, even if a rebellious child.

I think we're in a very low point of music right now.

I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.

I frequently hear our present period described as uncertain, confused, chaotic.

You can kill a body, but you cannot kill the great and noble idea of peace.

America's exceptional nature confers upon us responsibilities. We are not exceptional because we say so; we are exceptional because, over and over, we do exceptional things - things like what Generals Marshall and MacArthur accomplished putting Europe and Japan back on their feet after World War II.

I was one of those children forced into fighting at the age of 13, in my country Sierra Leone, a war that claimed the lives of my mother, father and two brothers. I know too well the emotional, psychological and physical burden that comes with being exposed to violence as a child or at any age for that matter.

I grew up being told by my parents each time they went off to war that they may explode, so I needed to know how things like the gadgets in the kitchen worked.