Ned Rorem Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 40 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ned Rorem.
Famous Quotes By Ned Rorem
Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this. — Ned Rorem
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. — Ned Rorem
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. — Ned Rorem
Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love. — Ned Rorem
Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable. — Ned Rorem
If you read reviews of concerts, the word 'creative' comes up all the time. However, performers playing music usually aren't creative. Critics might say they are, but they're just playing another persons work. They didn't create it. — Ned Rorem
If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest ... she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death. — Ned Rorem
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. — Ned Rorem
The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of. — Ned Rorem
The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own. — Ned Rorem
The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A deceptive memory may be the key to their originality. — Ned Rorem
Composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations. — Ned Rorem
The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty. — Ned Rorem
There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating. — Ned Rorem
To see itself through, music must have idea or magic ... Music with neither dies young though rich. — Ned Rorem
Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist. — Ned Rorem
Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion. — Ned Rorem
Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great. — Ned Rorem
As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military when they should be using that same energy getting rid of the military completely. — Ned Rorem
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. — Ned Rorem
If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer. — Ned Rorem
Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children. — Ned Rorem
If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist. — Ned Rorem
Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music. — Ned Rorem
Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back. — Ned Rorem
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. — Ned Rorem
Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin. — Ned Rorem
Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced. — Ned Rorem
Divine fires do not blaze each day, but an artist functions in their afterglow hoping for their recurrence. — Ned Rorem
The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience. — Ned Rorem
Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced. — Ned Rorem
So far as musical pedagogy is concerned -
And by extension of musical creation -
Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived — Ned Rorem
All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without. — Ned Rorem
Art means to dare - and to have been right. — Ned Rorem
Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future. — Ned Rorem