Ned Rorem Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.

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

To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time for registering those of yesterday.

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.

Art means to dare - and to have been right.

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

An artist doesn't necessarily have deeper feelings than other people, but he can express these feelings. He is like everyone else-only more so! He speaks with a Formal Sigh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Compose first, worry later.

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

Classic means standard as opposed to Romantic: form before meaning as opposed to meaning before form. It grows from inside out, while Romantic grows from outside in.

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

Minor artists borrow, great ones steal.

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

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

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

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

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

In music the present is extended.

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

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

Classic means standard as opposed to Romantic: form before meaning as opposed to meaning before form. It grows from inside out while Romantic grows from outside in.