Ned Rorem 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.

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

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

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

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

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

In music the present is extended.

Art means to dare - and to have been right.

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

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

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

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.

Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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