Dmitri Shostakovich Quotes

Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.

The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.

I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault.

The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.

The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.

Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!

Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.

What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.

Football is the ballet of the masses.

When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.

I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.

Those who have ears to hear, will hear

If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.

A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one.

Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.

It's about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.

Art destroys silence.