“My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at ...” — Esperanza Spalding Quote

“My earliest attempts at writing were when I was seven. I would sit at the piano and transcribe the songs I heard on the radio. I'd change little things in the music and write different lyrics.”

“I focused primarily on being an instrumentalist and studying music and on my primary means of expression: composing and playing.”

“I like to read, and I like dance. I don't dance, but I like to see other people dance.”

“I've always been interested in the tension between knowledge and mystery, between science and religion, and the various ways we cope with the unknown. Some of those are productive; some can be attempts to pin down things that are by nature impossible to know.”

“For then only will you be strong, when you cherish the laws, and when the revolutionary attempts of lawless men shall have ceased.”

“After a couple of failed attempts, I came up with a weird tuning where I was dropping the G string down a step so that it became a seventh, and it got me to a place where I could play all these figures fairly easily. It was not an easy thing to work out.”