Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Sleep is probably my favorite activity. I wrote this piece out of gratitude that I'm able to sleep well as an offering to people who don't.
When I was a kid, there were really only two possible futures in the foreground, which were Orwell's '1984' and Huxley's 'Brave New World'.
All music is just a collision of sounds until you know its internal conventions and understand the nuances. It's a question of familiarity.
My own goals center around writing the best music that I can, and only I can determine whether or not I've succeeded in accomplishing that.
If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.
When young, one learns his craftsmanship, may become a young master, and it is youth that is most auspicious for developing certain skills.
Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn't need music; lyrics do.
Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.
A libretto that should never have been accepted on a subject that should never have been chosen bya man who should never have attempted it.
A good film demands its own score, and if you are a musician, your conscience will never allow you to do something mediocre for a good film.
What is music? Music is language. A human being wants to express ideas in this language, but not ideas that can be translated into concepts.
We've gotten better as a live band. The songs have been allowed to grow with our audience. I don't think I would have done it any other way.
The first impulse of a great number of civilized musicians... is to protest ourdeclaration that the music in Hungary belongs to the Gypsies.
I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.
Someone who is incapable of drawing, and cannot master line or colour perspective can always express themselves in some form of abstraction.
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white.
My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.
When you make music you are acting as a philosopher. You can either do that consciously or you can do it unconsciously, but you're doing it.
What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make.
Sometimes when a new piece of knowledge comes along you suddenly change your priorities and focus on something completely different instead.
As a chapter closes in your life, And a new one starts for you, May your years be filled with all the things You've been looking forward to!
Great musicians accept everything that they hear and find something good. They take what they like and they throw away what they don't like.
Thanks for the memory Of lingerie with lace, Pilsner by the case And how I jumped the day you trumped my one-and-only ace How lovely it was!
I don't want to know anything about your system of ethics. Strength is the morality of the man who stands out from the rest, and it is mine.
Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.
I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.
Games are considered to be in the sub-culture category, coming under movies, coming under manga or comics or animation, especially in Japan.
Into the woods--you have to grope, But that's the way you learn to cope. Into the woods to find there's hope Of getting through the journey.
The movie adaptations of stage musicals that I've seen, without exception, in my opinion don't work. A lot of people would disagree with me.
We are either going to dissolve as a human race or we are going to break through into a new understanding of what it is to be a human being.
When Jesus wept, the falling tear in mercy flowed beyond all bound; when Jesus groaned, a trembling fear seized all the guilty world around.
My dear sister! I’m amazed to discover that you can compose so delightfully. In a word, your Lied is beautiful. You must compose more often.
I suppose if you make enough money with one album, you can relax the rest of your life. I would rather go for smaller and stronger successes.
One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife
If you've become a huge act and you're still doing the same music you wrote with your friends when you were making zero dollars, you're lazy.
You can have a table full of gourmet food, but the minute you put a box of Entenmann's doughnuts out, that's all people are gonna talk about.
Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned. I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music.
Composing's not voluntary, you know. There's no choice, you're not free. You're landed with an idea and you have responsibility to that idea.
Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.
What is important to me is that the world understand that the problems of the Dead Sea concern not only residents of the region but humanity.
Dartmouth is the place I've devoted my life to, so it's very sad to see this kind of decline in the intellectual strength of the institution.
Lamplighters are the guys who manually turned on all the street lamps in London and turned them off. That was the gig in the 1930s in London.
What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
While I believe there is certainly a phenomenon of timelessness in art, the people writing today can comment on today in an exclusive manner.
Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.
Deep listening is experiencing heightened awareness or expanded awareness of sound and of silence, of quiet, and of sounding - making sounds.
The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance.
I was horrified by modern 12-tone music. I said to myself, 'Maybe I can find something different... maybe salvation, liberation, is possible.
I was famous from the age of 13, and after a while you become immune to it - in a good way. You look at positives and what you can do with it.