“It's because they want to sound like Americans. I'd like to see them develop our music and sing it their way, but they think sounding American is going to take them higher, but it is not. They have beautiful voices, but they want to sound like Whitney Houston. You can't beat people like that at their own game. And they can't beat me at mine, either!”

“If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.”

“I want to live like music sounds."- Ruth”

“I just don't know," I said, my voice sounding bumby, not like mine, "how do you help someone who doesn't want your help. What do you do when you can't do anything?”

“If [music] has that tag on it, regardless if it sounds like that or not they’ll never go and find out what it really sounds like. To be labeled “emo” is sometimes very apropos, because there are a bunch of bands that actually sound like carbon copies of each other. But again, that’s music, so.”

“I became an actor despite that. But with this look, who's going to think I'm gay? It would be hard to take me for someone like that. Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?”

“Without the beat in the background, Jazz basically sounds like an armadillo was let loose on the keyboard”

““Petersburg socialism seems cold to the likes of our Cossacks, who would rather worship personalities than embrace ideas.”
I shared his irony. “You make them sound like Americans.””

“When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.”

“Someday you're really going to have to describe to me in more detail what life is like on the planet you live on. Because it sounds really great, and I'd like to visit there one day.”