Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I started learning the piano at the age of 4 or 5, so I think I already liked music then.
Composers tend to assume that everyone loves music. Surprisingly enough, everyone doesn’t.
I went to jail at 16 for stealing tires off Cadillacs. When I got out I said, Never again.
Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.
Claude Debussy was a rare phenomenon a composer profoundly and subversively revolutionary.
Oh, you happy sons of the North who have been reared at the bosom of Bach, how I envy you!
Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.
I listen to all kinds of music - new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.
People love to hear a guy who is really good on his instrument. They love to watch him go.
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?
I always dreamed, when I started writing music, to find a way of immersing yourself in it.
I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
And I'm always interested when other musicians are trying to discover new worlds of sound.
The human voice is the first and most natural musical instrument, also the most emotional.
A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide.
The music you love when you're a teenager is always going to be the most important to you.
'Rent' was the show that made me want to write. Or that showed me you're allowed to write.
Figured Bass (Harmony) and Religion are self-contained things, one should not argue these.
It's so important to me to make the music right that I didn't have time to be intimidated.
My whole thing is not just to play music for people, but to make them part of the evening.
I assumed no one would ever listen to my music, and for quite a lot of years, I was right.
I've been living with the minor second all my life and I finally found a way to handle it.
The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of
I was composing before I realised I was a composer. I mean it came more or less naturally.
Does it not seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener we hear them?
That first concept is alway the most naturally and best. The mind errs, the emotion never.
Treat everyone you meet as though they are the most important person you'll meet that day.
The incredible thing about the human mind is that is didn't come with an instruction book.
I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.
The music had to be rooted, and yet had to branch out,like the wild imagination of a child.
The greatest moments of the human spirit may be deduced from the greatest moments in music.
What really, really inspires me is that you don't see many black superheroes on television.
I attempt to compose symphonies, although it is clear to me that logically it is pointless.
Everyone to me has to pick a subject to talk about in music if you're going to be a writer.
One thing I like about jazz, kid, is that I don't know what's going to happen next. Do you?
American politics are important because it affects the entire world in often negative ways.
I studied classical guitar in school, and that type of stuff has led to writing for Kronos.
I love the physicality of instruments, and instruments as objects, like dancers are bodies.
Playing pentatonic scales over orchestral music is not something I want to do or listen to.
It would be really hard to get serious about anything political today unless it was a joke.
I like creating these rhythmic patterns. These interlocking rhythmic things are really fun.
I thought in terms of the enthusiasm of doing it. I didn't think about whether I was ready.
Today you have something like A Film by Joe Harry. That is patently asinine and ridiculous.
Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind - listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody.
My sole ambition as a composer is to hurl my javelin into the infinite space of the future.
There's another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.
For suddenly, I saw you there And through foggy London town The sun was shining everywhere.
A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.
Music is about imagination. It's about thought. It's about creating something from nothing.