I’d love it if American kids were listening to Muslim music.

I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

The Hindus are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

What ‚multiculturalism‘ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

Music has an intrinsic meaning, which has always been mysterious to me.

Although cover notes for classical music albums tend to say that the trill of flutes suggests mountain streams and so on, I don’t think anybody listens to music with the expectation that they’re going to be presented with a sort of landscape painting.

America has absorbed people from around the world, and there is an Indian in every part of the world. This characterizes both the societies. Indians and Americans have co-existed in their natural temperament.

I’m so happy I discovered early how wonderful music makes me feel.

There’s a lot of rednecks in the country where I grew up.

London is a modern Babylon.

When you’re thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.

I went to see ‚Phantom of the Opera‘ with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music… Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time – the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

Latin music is universal.

For me, great music doesn’t just have to fall into one category or one genre and I love appreciating all kinds of music.

Music for me, it demands full concentration.

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.

I used to think that, given enough goodwill, anybody would be able to ‚get‘ any music, no matter how distant the culture from which it came. And then I heard Chinese opera.

Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context.

I could care less about the particular. I like to make music.

I have always marched to my own beat, and most frequently, it was inconsistent not only with my own immediate family, but with my culture as well.

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn’t matter. You said, ‚That’s an American‘ because there’s a readiness to smile and to talk to people.