Stephen Hough Quotes

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  • 95 quotes

Stephen Hough, is quoted 95 times on QuoteForever. The subjects that come up most often are Beethoven, Silence, Moment and Ecstasy.

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I wanted to be a disc jockey.

There are many doors to the heart.

America has been central to my life.

Traveling the road can be quite tiresome.

Freedom comes with the impossibility of choosing.

I really feel something's missing if I'm not writing.

Classical music thinks in centuries, not four-year terms.

Silence is the necessary soil for any thought to flourish.

Out of silence is born concentration, and from that comes learning.

I once nodded off during one of my own concerts. While I was playing.

My principal commitment is playing the piano. But I always loved words.

Food waste is an atrocity that is reducible, if not completely avoidable.

I was such a lazy teenager: I didn't read or play the piano beyond the bare minimum.

Most people spend their life trying to get away from Catholicism. Amazingly, I chose it.

In anything, there has to be that moment of fasting, really, in order to enjoy the feast.

Brahms is life-changing every time. And though I love him, I can't say that about Mompou.

Playing the piano is incredibly personal... But when it's your own piece, it's doubly so.

I've twice been on the point of giving up my performing career to train for the priesthood.

I have had a place in New York in the musicians' district on the Upper West Side since 1986.

I'm not really a professional composer; I just compose now and then when someone asks me to.

Musicians keep playing when the lights go out, when people are suffering, confused, or angry.

The 'Missa Mirabilis' is a big work which was conceived for a large organ and a lot of singers.

Few occupations pass the solitary hours more fruitfully than the playing of a musical instrument.

I love my painting - it fills me with passion. But it's not something I expect anyone else to love.

The daily glitter of skyscrapers competing with the stars is an unnecessary, unforgivable decadence.

I like the extras in life. Concentrating on serious things doesn't mean you can't also enjoy the lighter ones.

In the bit of painting that I've done, I'm interested in colour and texture. I'm very interested in transparency.

Live in the present moment. The past and future are nonexistent. Only the present can be grasped or, better, embraced.

I think there are very few people that I would give the title of genius to, really, but Beethoven unquestionably is one of them.

I would do a sort of violence to myself if I didn't express myself in the directly creative ways of writing, both words and music.

All things of beauty can speak to us of God, and I'm very happy to listen to and be inspired by people of every religious background.

Restaurants should be forced to recycle their leftovers for animal consumption - and should create fewer leftovers in the first place.

I don't think of faith as something that's like a rock, that never changes. I think it's something that's very fluid, always changing.

The things I do outside of playing the piano are done out of an inner necessity, not just because I want to try my hand at different things.

I didn't want to look back in 10 or 20 years and say, 'Yes, I always wanted to write that piano sonata or that novel, but I never had time.'

I love food, but if I find a restaurant I like in a new city, I can eat every meal there, and sometimes I do... and even sometimes the same dish.

Most people are at a concert because they want to be inspired, entertained, moved; we musicians have the mission to be bringers of joy, of ecstasy.

Bach and Beethoven erected temples and churches on the heights. I only wanted to build dwellings for men in which they might feel happy and at home.

To me, the heart of the ministry lies in being able to help deeply distressed people, not because of your own qualities but because you represent Christ.

I've loved Alfred Cortot's playing from an early age, and I never tire of hearing his recordings, particularly Chopin and Schumann from the 1920s and '30s.

Schubert, Franck, and Liszt were all Roman Catholics who questioned or doubted or lived in different ways, and religion was certainly part of all their lives.

I want music to move me, and I don't think it can do that without at least a link to tonality. It's the tug between atonal and tonal which makes music poignant.

I wanted to be a monk at some time in my life, or a priest, so there was a kind of reflex quite early on not to be attached to anything that might be taken away.

It's very hard to come up with ideal situations... With different moods and the difficulties of traveling around, I often play my best under the worst conditions.

If they say they don't like the way I play Beethoven, then I can swallow that, and maybe they're right. But if they don't like what I've written, then it's about me.

The 'Rhapsody' has a lean, modern, American feel about it, whereas with Rachmaninoff's second and third concertos, you feel very much you're still in old imperial Russia.

In superficial terms, to have an orchestral career is to be better than others, or at least to be chosen over others on that particular occasion; it is a form of survival.

I've always written - about music, art, things going on around the world. The danger is that it becomes too personal. I don't think people want it at that level of intimacy.

Unlike sport, music is not about winning or keeping fit or promoting your town or school; it's about celebrating, to a level approaching ecstasy, the deepest human longings.

There are artists who delight listeners with their wild and daring individuality; there are others who uncover the written score with reverence. There are few who can do both.

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