If you are a professional, the speed with which you react to a potential problem separates the men from the boys.

I don't like to define my music. To me, music is pure emotion. It's language that can communicate certain emotions and the rhythms cuts across genders, cultures and nationalities. All you need to do is close your eyes and feel those emotions.

Not being able to read and write music is not the same as being illiterate in speech and writing.

While most of the music I write is instrumental, I love to use the human voice as another instrument.

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

Kashmir, the 86,000-square-mile region in India's north, both is and isn't the India of the popular imagination.

I think, in the middle of the '90s, I made a couple of records where I tried to figure out what I thought the radio wanted from me. They weren't my best records by any stretch of the imagination. It didn't take me too long to figure out, 'Whoa, back up, dude. Just go back to following your heart, and it will all be OK.'

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.