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Quotes by Composer
"I've been living with the minor second all my life and I finally found a way to handle it."
37
"When I got finished, Gershwin paid me the ultimate compliment. He said, 'Boy, even I couldn't do that.'"
37
"Questioning the nature and implications of liminal instances necessarily involves failure, if only in the specifically technical sense of entering spaces where prevailing criteria of success scarcely apply."
37
"When I speak of "cycles," I am referring to lengthy intervals of relative homogeneity, if not in the resolving of problems, than at least with respect to the consistency of their capacity to productively irritate."
37
"I come from a background of experimental music which mingled real sounds together with musical sounds."
37
"Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes."
37
"Esquire, in a July, 1957 issue, has a photograph of me playing the French horn at the Five Spot."
July,
37
"I had to realize that the use of samples has its rules, too."
37
"Most gentlemen don't like love, they just like to kick it around."
37
"Music is the subliminal connecting adhesive in film, or at least in narrative feature films."
36
"The idea in The Man that Would Be King was that the music should recreate all that majestic surrounding and emphasize the adventure, but also speak about the frustration or, rather said, the curse of both protagonists, even before happened what happens them."
36
"Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel."
36
"Do not rely on unplanned music; it comes out as though it were planned, but planned by someone you cross the street to avoid."
36
"For almost thirty years I repeatedly saw one and the same dream: I would arrive in Vienna at long last. I would feel really happy, for I was returning to my serene childhood."
36
"A person of any mental quality has ideas of his own. This is common sense."
36
"People who share the same language, French or Chinese or whatever, have the same vocal cords and emit sounds which are basically the same, as they come from the same throats and lungs."
36
"Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless."
36
"Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist."
36
"I don't see 'lines of force' as being destructive, except to the extent that they are exclusively traceable through observance of the path of distorted material left in their wake."
36
"In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about."
36
"I was offered a free villa in Hollywood, but I said no thank you, I prefer to live in Italy."
36
"When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors."
36
"It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of "culture.""
36
"I suppose that the scope and implications of such forces have rendered my personal accounting ritual pretty much obsolete. That's how things sometimes go."
36
"Every writer I've ever spoken to feels fraudulent in some way or other."
36
"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."
36
"Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way."
36
"Well, I think music for kids is never anything but experimental is it?"
35
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