“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.”

“I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, 'Very interesting inte”