Composer Quotes

But, yes, now I wouldn't do some of those soundtracks the way I did them.

A Passage to India. It is my favourite movie.

You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.

Vagueness is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth.

There can be nothing exclusive about substantial art. It comes directly out of the heart of the experience of life and thinking about life and living life.

It is conceivable that what is unified form to the author or composer may of necessity be formless to his audience.

If a poet knows more about a horse than he does about heaven, he might better stick to the horse, and some day the horse may carry him into heaven.

If a composer has a nice wife and some nice children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?

Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world.

The fabric of existence weaves itself whole.

One thing I am certain of is that, if I have done anything good in music, it was, first, because of my father, and second, because of my wife.

In 'thinking up' music I usually have some kind of a brass band with wings on it in back of my mind.

A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is part of the day's unity.

But maybe music was not intended to satisfy the curious definiteness of man. Maybe it is better to hope that music may always be transcendental language in the most extravagant sense.

Every great inspiration is but an experiment.

The result of this union would be, not the fortuitous result of a series of approximations and concessions, but the harmonious synthesis of two aspects of a single thought.

I dream of a collaboration that would finally be total, in which the librettist would often think as a composer and the composer as a librettist.

We are known as one of the few truly antifascist families in Munich.

My friends, who sleep for all eternity; we do not forget you.

Unending was the stream, unending the misery, unending the sorrow.

We get more dangerous as we accumulate knowledge, and that's both a sadness and something to control, try to learn to live with, make terms with.

Three days in a city now and I'm quite flipped. There's too much noise. I just can't do with it.

I don't want to wear my compositional tools on my sleeve.

You mustn't underestimate an audience's intelligence.

You know, anyone who invites me to do something makes me feel special.

The biggest thrill you can have is to tell people one of your songs, and have them be able to hum it.

Normally I can balance two or three things. The problem is when you're out of work and don't have anything to balance. I think people assume you're always busy. You go through dry spells.

My whole thing is not just to play music for people, but to make them part of the evening.

My show business career doesn't mean I can't write a symphony. It just means I was never asked to write one.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned. But I remember the beauty and thrill of being moved by Broadway musicals - particularly the endings of shows.