Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You know, I think becoming a parent has really changed the way that I feel impacted by what's going on in the world around me.
I think we are all individuals at the end of the day. There's nothing about culture that can prescribe who you're meant to be.
I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses.
Music should use everything. The sadness of life and the fun of life. Anything that provokes a sound that is exciting is good.
A landscape, torn by mists and clouds, in which I can see ruins of old churches, as well as of Greek temples - that is Brahms.
Never mind, put any book on the piano, and someone can turn from time to time, so I need not look as though I played by heart.
All great composers of the past spent most of their time studying. Feeling alone won't do the job. A man also needs technique.
Mazur was a remarkable artist. During our time in Rome we became friends. I would often perform my works for him at the piano.
If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.
The students were missing out a lot in their ensemble playing because they weren't listening to each other or the environment.
Ideas, like young wine, should be put in storage and taken up again only after they have been allowed to ferment and to ripen.
Shall we gather at the river, Where bright angel feet have trod; With its crystal tide for ever, Flowing by the throne of God?
I started listening to classical music when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, I listened to pop records or band records.
I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.
I do not hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them gleich alles zusammen - at the same time all together.
When you get above the line, you're above the line. So my thing is I just want to make music where I am always above that line.
To me, atonality is against nature. There is a center to everything that exists. The planets have the sun, the earth, the moon.
The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven't.
Superstar was made so early in my career I had nothing to do with it at all. The first time I saw it was the opening screening.
I don't know what really makes a great musical or not. In the end, you write it, and you write it because you want to write it.
Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine.
When I think of people I am close to, I genuinely feel that I can include Josh Lyman, Toby Ziegler, C.J. Cregg and Sam Seaborn.
You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.
It took me three weeks to write the 'Rhapsody in Blue.' I had always wanted to write something blue and Paul Whiteman inspired.
Bassoon is not an easy instrument to play and to pick it up and play it like a flute or a saxophone is quite an accomplishment.
An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.
The characteristic of 'Oxygene' is a mixture of innocence and ambition, of trying to do something different in a different way.
The framework of a symphony must be so strong that it forces you to follow it, regardless of the environment and circumstances.
Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating.
People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.
Yes, you're very very old But try to think of it as not being cursed After all, in a hostage situation You'd be released first!
I love classical music; I love the way it's worked... all those chord sequences so I often use that sort of effect in my solos.
Every music - except dance music, which is for dancing, I suppose - is for the spirit of the human being, and not for the body.
Pretty much anything William Shatner is in is great. He's great at playing that 'I'm the only one sane in the world' character.
I've always written at night - my working day for years was around 9pm to 2am - though I do keep more regular hours these days.
The world changes materially. Science makes advances in technology and understanding. But the world of humanity doesn't change.
To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present: that is what I spend my whole life doing
I think writing for a world one has invented can be infinitely more interesting than writing for the world we've all inherited.
My sole recreations consist in dancing English hornpipes and cutting capers. Italy is a land of sleep; I am always drowsy here.
Sometimes I intentionally cut it off. I just want to be in silence, especially when I'm traveling. I watch movies without sound.
If you learn classical guitar, you play Bach, and then John Dowland. He's the greatest. He's interesting for many, many reasons.
As a pop musician, as someone who makes songs, the best ideas are the simplest. They come, and that's the lightning bolt moment.
Sad times May follow your tracks, Bad times May bar you from Saks, Add times When Satan in slacks Breaks down your self control.
Of the One O'Clock Lab Band after hearing their performance, and sitting in with them at the White House: "I wish it were mine".
As a composer, I know that all sorts of sounds I hear are making their way into my brain and soul and later sneak into my music.
I started getting interested in the notes that I could hear being generated when I hammered on while playing a classical guitar.
The advent of electronically synthesized sound after World War II has unquestionably had enormous influence on music in general.
I want the music to be ambiguous. Its tone gives you a context in which to start visualizing what you're feeling with the music.
There was a very famous musician in our family. He was a great violinist, an internationally known teacher. He was Leopold Auer.
I find I work best as a reactor, trying to portray something on a screen musically. If I were a boxer, I'd be a counter-puncher.