Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music.
I've had pieces in my catalog that kind of amble along, that really never go anywhere, but are known and liked.
I'm no songwriter because all of my popular songs have just been outgrowths of themes for the various pictures.
God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her through the night with a light from above.
I've been called over the top. How silly. If you don't go over the top, you can't see what's on the other side.
Life, sometimes so wearying is worth its weight in gold the experience of traveling lends a wisdom that is old.
When I joined the band I didn't know any of the tunes, and when I left the band I didn't know any of the tunes!
My advice to all new writers - male or female - it isn't easy, but forge ahead and be true to your originality.
One must not hold one's self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one's creations.
I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it shall be behind me.
Miguelito, liberated from having to sing with Cugat, sounds like he just got out of jail and is letting it rip.
You can't pander to your audience. You might in the short term, but ultimately you can't hoodwink them, either.
Music is a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal
Within each of us is a hidden store of determination. Determination to keep us in the race when all seems lost.
I was supposed to be a doctor. I was supposed to go to Princeton. And everything I was supposed to do I didn't.
I happen to like movies and plays about dislikeable people as long as I get to know why they are what they are.
In the world of tomorrow, the new man will 'think' the place he wants to go, then his mind will take him there.
And then when I went to Chicago, that's when I had these outer space experiences and went to the other planets.
Yet I would not die a maid, because I had a mother, As I was by one brought forth, I would bring forth another.
We don't have butlers. Obviously we have people who look after the houses, but I try not to run things formally.
Two pieces of advice for young composers: Go away during technical rehearsals. And do not have a back operation.
I woke up one morning, went downstairs, said 'Good morning' to my mother and nearly scared both of us to death.'
Mozart, prodigal heaven gave thee everything, grace and strength, abundance and moderation, perfect equilibrium.
If only your pure and clean mind could touch me, dear Haydn, nobody has a greater reverence for you than I have.
To all that he touched he gave a new meaning, a new color, a new outline, a new loveliness, and a new poignancy.
Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .
In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.
The man who writes for hire has an obligation, if only to himself, to keep an open mind and to absorb new ideas.
When you go into the studio or get up on the stage with people who have more experience or knowledge, you learn.
Nature endows us with the feeling that moves us in all our musical experiences; we might call her gift instinct.
The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.
Theatre takes place all the time - wherever one is - and art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case.
If there are questions then, of course, there are answers, but the final answer makes the questions seem absurd.
Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.
Consider this on your birthday You've got life's struggle beaten For 60 years you've ate And avoided being eaten
I can do nothing but think of you... What have you done to me? Can't you remove the spell you have cast over me?
Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.
I feel that in order to learn as much about music as I would like to learn, I would need more than one lifetime.
The more you cling to things, The more you love them, The more the pain you suffer, When they're taken from you.
Music must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or, in other words, must never cease to be music.
Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.
With 'Boxer,' we made the kind of music we wanted to make and didn't really worry about what the expectation was.
Most of the forward movements of life in general ... have been the work of essentially religiously-minded people.
I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault.
I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.
A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
I'm not a practicing kabbalist. I'm not a spiritual master. I'm not a rabbi. I don't - but it's part of who I am.