Bernard Herrmann Quotes & Sayings

Your views are as narrow as your tie. — Bernard Herrmann

As a composer I might class myself as a Neo-Romantic, inasmuch as I have always regarded music as a highly personal and emotional form of expression. I like to write music which takes its inspiration from poetry, art and nature. I do not care for purely decorative music. Although I am in sympathy with modern idioms, I abhor music which attempts nothing more than the illustration of a stylistic fad. And in using modern techniques, I have tried at all times to subjugate them to a larger idea or a grander human feeling. — Bernard Herrmann

I feel that music on the screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety, or misery. It can propel narrative switftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry. Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience. — Bernard Herrmann

Anyone who believes he has caught him in a fantastic lie is apt to find out that the fantastic story is the truth. And some unimportant statement, like just having bought an evening paper a half-hour ago, is the lie."

--On Orson Welles — Bernard Herrmann