Gustavo Dudamel Quotes

I started writing songs when I was real young, when I was 3 years old. The piano spoke to me - I don't remember when I wasn't playing piano. My second grade talent show was the first time I performed my own thing. I dressed up as Dracula and played a song called 'Monster Rock' that I wrote. And I won.

When I was 4 or 5, I attended my father's concerts. He very often played Strauss waltzes as encores and I saw something happening with the audience.

When I was young, I wanted to be a writer or painter. I was always writing stories, and I excelled at drawing. My teachers encouraged my art work. When I was 9 or 10, I began learning piano and started writing music.

At 3 years old, I was imitating and doing fun little commercials for the family. Then at 5, I knew, 'OK, this is something I really like.' At 8, I was crying in front of the mirror and my mom was like, 'Oh boy, here we go. We know what she's going to do.'

My mom bought me an 'Anne of Green Gables' journal. And I just remember thinking it was so cool, and I could write anything in it.

A lot of people say video games can be stifling. Older people say, 'We had to go outside, and we had to make up stories!' For me, video games broadened my horizons. Playing 'Golden Axe,' I was those characters. I imagined myself being in that world, so honestly, it was a really good thing.

I wrote my first song when I was four, and I played it at my piano recital.

I wrote a song a good long while ago, 'I Ain't Livin' Long Like This,' that has been around and been recorded by a lot of people, but it was basically childhood memory.

I saw 'Beauty and the Beast' at eight years old in theatres and spent hours trying to recreate the majestic imagery of that story in a drawing notepad at home.

In sixth or seventh grade, my teacher assigned me to write and sing a song. I remember sitting at the piano in my living room, trying to get that song perfect. That was the moment I realized I really love doing this.

I was obsessed with the Loch Ness Monster, I would look through these books in the library and dream about visiting Loch Ness one day… That stuff was really kind of what I loved as a kid.

My first movie I saw when I was a kid was 'The Jungle Book.' I was 5 years old, and I saw it in a movie theater. Seeing that movie really lit the fuse and ignited my passion for animation.

So, when I was eight or nine my mom's friend gave her a big purple bag full of cassettes and I found Seals and Crofts' 'Summer Breeze'... When I found it I stopped going through the bag because I was like, well, I'm not going to find anything better than this. I just thought it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.

It's a dream to be its conductor. Sometimes I think, 'My God, I can't believe it.' It's a dream which came true.

Making music is like school to me.

I focused on the saxophone ever since high school. It wasn't until my album 'Poetica,' which I recorded in 2006, that I went back to the clarinet. It felt like it was waiting for me!

I have a certain memory of the way in which my father loved me until I was 10, and it was unconditional and eternal. I get to carry that for the rest of my life, but on a practical level after age 10, it's just me sort of figuring it out.

I remember watching 'Apollo' with my other grandma - I have so many grandmas - and seeing these young girls sing... I knew in that moment that I wanted to sing.

My most prized possession would have to be 'Trick It.' I did rap here and there with some songs before, but 'Trick It' was my first time challenging myself to write lyrics from beginning to end.

My first toy was a box of transistors.

I remember being a kid, I was a little kid when my dad took me to 'Munchausen.' I guess he took my whole family, but I kind of didn't want to go for some reason. Then we got there, and I was so mesmerized by the movie, and I was really taken by the young Sarah Polley. I didn't realize until many, many years later that it was Sarah Polley.

I grew up with games. It changed my life. It changed my social relationships with my friends. It defined my childhood. It's something I really cherished.

Apparently, when I was really little, I watched the film version of 'The Secret Garden' and thought it was, like, the best thing ever.

There was an open mic night when I was about 11 years old and I went and I played the songs that I'd written in my bedroom and it was the first night where I felt like I was myself at school.

I know as far as I'm concerned, I'm getting really excited about writing, and I'm taking guitar and vocal lessons.