Leonard Bernstein Quotes

It would be nice to hear someone accidentally whistle something of mine, somewhere, just once.

Music ... can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial.

I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

Which of my Jewish roots do I follow?

Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune.

The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle.

Life without music is meaningless, music without life is academic.

When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.

I can't live one day without hearing music, playing it , studying it , or thinking about it .

Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it.

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.

When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost.

The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning.

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm

Two things are necessary for great achievement: a plan and not quite enough time.

It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion.

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time ... The wait is simply too long.

This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly than ever before.

I hate you, Richard Wagner ... but I hate you on my knees.

I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.

Bernstein has been disclosing musical secrets that have been well known for over 400 years.

Conducting is like making love to a hundred people at the same time.

Wine snobbery, of course, is part showmanship, part sophistication, part knowledge, and part bluff

From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining.

I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.

Life without music is unthinkable.

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both.

We can all shut-up and go back to our caves.

I have two answers to everything and one answer to nothing.

In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.

Success is all very well as long as you don't inhale.

Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.