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Quotes by Composer
"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome."
22
"For me it's the instrument. If I want to think of a flute and the state of the arts I hear a vibrato; I don't know what a flute is unless the person plays it for me."
22
"If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask isn't it? I think I don't really think too much about it. I am a bit shy socially, yeah, I admit that."
22
"Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again."
22
"In all my travels I never met with any one Scotchman but what was a man of sense: I believe everybody of that country that has any, leaves it as fast as they can."
21
"Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel."
21
"Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning."
21
"There is nothing is more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little - the book of Nature."
21
"It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces."
21
"Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration."
21
"I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way."
21
"So, essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns."
21
"It is rare that even a jazz musician finds an individual voice."
21
"The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them."
21
"My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation."
21
"All my music is very simple in that melody is usually clearly stated."
21
"The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us."
21
"Actually, most things I say in public lead more or less directly to my own compositional practice, so I should be careful about generalizing lest they come back to haunt me."
21
"I felt alienated at school, and I never did well with girls."
21
"Most gentlemen don't like love, they just like to kick it around."
21
"One experiments and has to choose always the best results."
20
"Nobody understands another's sorrow, and nobody another's joy."
20
"Socially I never was an outsider. I have never thought of the conflict element before frankly, but perhaps it was wanting to belong, and at the same time wanting to retain one's own personality."
20
"You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion."
20
"Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art."
20
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