"Music is energy. Period. It's just energy. Music is energy and We are energy, and you can never destroy energy - Einstein says that. So it's a part of us. It is a part of all of us. Interview with Yo-Yo Ma, in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , January 13, 2026

"For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule"(from the Buddhist Dhammapada , 1:5; "Sacred Books of the East," Vol.X Part I, p. 5; translation by Max Müller). Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Throusand Faces , footnote, p. 144.

"You come to see that the opposite of winning isn't losing; it's failing to see the larger picture." TEDSummit on July 2019 by Pico Iyer

"We bring all possible tools for predicting the conditions, but it doesn't always go as planned," he said. "It's our duty to be humble and try our best." The ship's captain, Kim Gwang-heon Journey to Antarctica , Raymond Zhong, Reporting from the icebreaker Araon in the Amundsen Sea. The New York Times, January 7 2026

"Practice Consciously, Succeed Unconsciously" ~ Jumana Sophia I have a couple of spiritual teachers whose words resonate me and guide me to my True North. Jumana is one of them. She said this phrase in her YouTube letter quoting her teacher's word. She was using it as her spiritual practice, but I thought this is so true for practicing music too.

The important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love. Teresa of Avila

...I still can't help but wonder why acute sensitivity to the beauty of this world seem to come with an equal measure of permeability to pain, but I've come to accept this package..... Mirabai Starr, Caravan of No Despair: A Memoire of Loss and Transformation . (Sounds True, 2015), p. 266

......We are living through history. As artists, we have to make images for the world to show that we have feelings. We have ideas. We have kids. We exist. Ragha Zaiton, artist living in Nablus, West Bank .....It was a futile attempt to filter or stop the massacres and deaths. I can only stop them metaphorically. Taysir Batniji, artist from Gaza living in Paris ......During this war, I made art almost every day. It's been my way of resistance..... Wafa Hourani, artist bas

The past has been a mint/ Of blood and sorrow. / That must not be/ True of tomorrow. Langston Hughes

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind. Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Prinston, 2004), p. 18

"Contemporary music actually made me brave....And that courage I could then apply to the standard repertoire." Barbara Hannigan, quoted...

"I have encouraged people to color outside of the lines, for lack of a better analogy.....We're not trying to reproduce the notation...

私は幾度か書いてきたように作曲家でしかない。これは作曲を職業とするものの初歩的な自覚にすぎない。私は作曲家であって、発明家とは異なるのだから、特許などというものに書かずりあうことなしに生きられる。私が考えるようなことはかならず他の誰かが考えていることだろうし、それだから、私...

"The important thing is not to stop questioning..... Never lose a holy curiosity" "I never teach pupils. I only attempt to provide the...