“The guitar is your first wings. It’s assigned and designed to unfold your vision and imagination.”

Whether you are doing it in the bar, the church, the strip joint, or the Himalayas, the first duty of music is to complement and enhance life.

No one’s better than me. I’m not better than anyone. Whether it’s Eric Clapton or BB King we look straight at each other. And that keeps it real.

Peace has never come from dropping bombs. Real peace comes from enlightenment and educating people to behave more in a divine manner.

The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

When a baby comes you can smell two things: the smell of flesh, which smells like chicken soup, and the smell of lilies, the flower of another garden, the spiritual garden.

People are flowers. Music is water. Musicians are the hose.

The concept is to weave in some emotion.

Surrender your whole being to a note, and gravity disappears with one chord.

If you stay in your heart you will always be inspired and if you are inspired you will always be enthusiastic. There is nothing more contagious on this planet as enthusiasm.

The most valuable possession you can own is an open heart. The most powerful weapon you can be is an instrument of peace.

The worst thing you can become in life is cynical. Cynical is like concrete. and nothing grows in concrete.

You meditate and you got the candles, you got the incense and you’ve been chanting, and all of a sudden you hear this voice: ‘Write this down’

Most people don’t have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.

When you are in your heart of hearts, you can see beyond appearances.

There is divinity in your DNA. Live your light.

I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

Since we think about ourselves so much of the time, it is comforting to assume … that we really know the score…. [But] this is not an easy assignment.

I don’t write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment.

I am never driven. Every film Ive made has been an assignment.

The people who inspire me most are those who are willing to see the world from a loving perspective. People who perceive obstacles as opportunities and problems as spiritual assignments. People who choose love.

Nowadays, there are seven music directors in one film. I had never heard of such a thing before. If one of our old music directors was told to share a score with others, he would have left the assignment.

I have decided that I won’t take up assignments that don’t interest me.

Holding on to something that has lost its magic, lost its mutual respect, hurts more. Elsa understood the assignment.

A relationship is more of an assignment than a choice. We can walk away from the assignment, but we cannot walk away from the lessons it presents. We stay with a relationship until a lesson is learned, or we simply learn it another way.