Ned Rorem quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ned Rorem

Ned Rorem Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Ned Rorem on Wise Famous Quotes.

Composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

I don't go to concerts much. I've heard everything. When I do go to movies, I walk out half the time. As for literature, I've read everything.

The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.

All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it.

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of.

Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.

There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating.

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.

Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.

The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.

To see itself through, music must have idea or magic ... Music with neither dies young though rich.

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

So far as musical pedagogy is concerned -
And by extension of musical creation -
Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived

Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.

Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.

Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.

It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.

Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.

Art means to dare - and to have been right.

In music the present is extended.

Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.

Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.

Anyone can be gay - it's no accomplishment - but only I can be me.

Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.

Divine fires do not blaze each day, but an artist functions in their afterglow hoping for their recurrence.