Quotes by Composers - Page 10

We have a genuine and devastating epidemic of opiate abuse in this country, and it is of critical importance that this problem be addressed. But we must do so in a way that doesn’t cut off an effective (and often the only) treatment for the chronically ill, many of whom are able to function in this world at all only because of the small respite that responsible opiate use provides.
Michael Bihovsky
You're a romantic,” said Crabbe. “You expect too much. Reality's always dull, you know, but when we see that it's all there is, well-it miraculously ceases to be dull.
Anthony Burgess
I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother.
Anthony Burgess
When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.
Frédéric Chopin
A quiet mind allows the artist to tap into the wellspring of Divine Music within.
Kenny Werner
Nothing is better than music.... It has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.
Nadia Boulanger
To what do you attribute your advanced age? Well I suppose I must attribute it to the fact that I have not died.
Sir Malcolm Sargent
...he refused to consider the Moroccans' present culture, however decadent, an established fact, an existing thing. Instead, he seemed to believe that it was something accidentally left over from bygone centuries, now in a necessary state of transition, that the people needed temporary guidance in order to progress to some better condition.
Paul Bowles
I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end.
Richard Strauss
Whoever tells a lie is not pure of heart, and such a person can not cook a clean soup.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.
Anthony Burgess
Déjà vu is simply remembrance of the future.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
This world needs much more kissing and far less fighting.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
When Marconi suggested the possibility of wireless transmission of sound (the radio),he was committed to a mental institution. But people like Lincoln, Edison, and Marconi were strongly motivated. So they didn't give up. They somehow knew that the only real failure is the one from which we learn nothing. They seemed to go on the assumption that there is no failure greater than the failure of not trying, and so they continued to try in the face of repeated failures.
John Powell
If there is a dark and hostile power, laying its treacherous toils within us, by which it holds us fast and draws us along the path of peril and destruction, which we should not otherwise have trod; if, I say there is such a power, it must form itself inside us and out of ourselves, indeed; it must become identical with ourselves. For it is only in this condition that we can believe in it, and grant it the room which it requires to accomplish its secret work. Now, if we have a mind which is sufficiently firm, sufficiently strengthened by the joy of life, always to recognize this strange enemy as such, and calmly to follow the path of our own inclination and calling, then the dark power will fail in its attempt to gain a form that shall be a reflection of ourselves.
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you.
Gustav Hoist
Ah,' thought the king sadly, shrugging his shoulders, "I see clearly that if one has a crazy wife, one cannot avoid being a fool.'("Queen Fantasque")
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Well, it's either kiss me or kill me, that's how I see it.
Tom Waits
Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments.
Hector Berlioz
Convince people that you need them, and watch what they do.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.
Charlie Chaplin
Classic means standard as opposed to Romantic: form before meaning as opposed to meaning before form. It grows from inside out while Romantic grows from outside in.
Ned Rorem
You may be thinking that your company has a human resources person who will keep you out of trouble. This is a dangerous misconception. Whether your company has a massive Human Resources Department with hundreds of representatives or a small office with just a single representative, these HR reps are not your advocates. They work for the company, not for you.
Johanna Harris
If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage the life and death of Jesus were those of a God.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Humor is a universal lanuage.
Joel Goodman
Give my regards to Broadway,Remember me to Herald Square,Tell all the gang at 42nd Street,That I will soon be there;Whisper of how I'm yearningTo mingle with the old time throng,Give my regards to old Broadway,And say that I'll be there e'er long.
George M. Cohan
We think too much and feel too little.
Charlie Chaplin
Simplicity is the key to beauty. Clarity is the key to perfection.
David Nevue
In the Negro melodies of America I find all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.
Antonin Dvorak
Make goals, dream big, live with passion.
Tony Newton
So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?
John Cage
Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa più, meno sa—Who knows most, knows least.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.
William Herschel
You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care.
Anthony Burgess
To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.
Anthony Burgess
I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.
Igor Stravinsky
I searched through rebellion drugs diet mysticism religion intellectual-ism and much more only to find that truth is basically simple and feels good clear and right.
Chick Corea
What these critics forget is that printing presses in themselves provide no guarantee of an enlightened outcome. People, not machines, made the Renaissance. The printing that takes place in North Korea today, for instance, is nothing more than propaganda for a personality cult. What is important about printing presses is not the mechanism, but the authors.
Jaron Lanier
For me to read a good novel without enjoying a cup of coffee or a cup of tea or a nice glass of wine in the process would be like having water without the wet. It's simply impossible.
Cat Ellington
Loneliness Ends With Love
Al Lerner
Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postwar years he had lived in solitude and carefully planned ignorance of what was happening in the world. Nothing had importance save the exquisitely isolated cosmos of his own consciousness. Then little by little he had had the impression that the light of meaning, the meaning of everything was dying. Like a flame under a glass it had dwindled, flickered and gone out, and all existence, including his own hermetic structure from which he had observed existence, had become absurd and unreal.
Paul Bowles
The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success.
Irving Berlin
May the scribes record it.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.
Charlie Chaplin
Plenty of masterpieces are just one cliché after another, Mozart for example, but that's quite natural, because if you think about it, two clichés that have never met each other before can beget the most original and profound effect.
Thomas Ades
The past places no absolute limit on the future.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I am sure my music has a taste of codfish in it.
Edvard Grieg
the sky here's very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it's a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind . . . [from] nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night.
Paul Bowles
The aim of the taper is to minimise accumulated fatigue and fill up the fuel stores to arrive at the start line fresh.
Dan Golding
The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress.
Anthony Burgess
If somebody tells you there's a rule, break it.
Hans Zimmer
Good.I need you to be scared.Very,very scared.And then you'll never be scared again.
Simon Holt
I have inflammation of the imagination.
Lera Auerbach
My doctors, who are not cavalier with prescriptions, give me this medication because I have earned their trust. And yet, with mounting government and public pressure, my doctors’ hands are becoming increasingly tied. They apologetically explain to me why they are required to make the medication even harder for me to get, against their own medical judgment. If the day ever comes when they aren’t allowed to prescribe Percocet to me at all, it may well be the end of the minimal quality of life I fight so hard to achieve.
Michael Bihovsky
I will find my wayI can go the distanceI'll be there somedayIf I can be strongI know every mile will be worth my whileI would go most anywhere to feel like I belong
Alan Menken
I had forgotten. Disgust shadows desire.Another life is never safely envied.
Robert Wells
Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.
Frank Zappa
Seriously: Do you want to spend your working life simply being satisfied? When you look back on 50 years spent in business, do you want to be able to say, “Well, I was satisfied"?? No! Make happiness your goal. As in, “Let’s make this a workplace where people are happy to work." As in, “I’ve been working for 50 years now, and it absolutely rocks! To me work is challenging, stimulating and just plain fun.
Alexander Kjerulf