Philip Glass Quotes & Sayings

What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music. — Philip Glass

I think it's a great handicap to be discovered at an early age. I didn't have that burden of early success. I had the much more livable and durable career where success comes late, and comes slowly, and you ease into it. So by the time it comes, you're ready to deal with it. — Philip Glass

I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger. — Philip Glass

But the difference between the little pieces and the big pieces - I'm not actually sure which are the little pieces. With some of the big pieces, it's a lot of musical running around, whereas the little pieces, you can say everything you want to say. — Philip Glass

What you hear depends on how you focus your ear. We're not talking about inventing a new language, but rather inventing new perceptions of existing languages. — Philip Glass

I don't know what I'm doing and it's the not knowing that makes it interesting. — Philip Glass

Years later, in 1987, I wrote a violin concerto for Ben. I knew he loved the Mendelssohn violin concerto, so I wrote it in a way that he would have liked. In his actual lifetime I didn't have the knowledge, skill, or inclination to compose such a work. I missed that chance by at least fifteen years. But when I could, I wrote it for him anyway. — Philip Glass

You get up early in the morning and you work all day. That's the only secret. — Philip Glass

It doesn't need to be imagined, it needs to be written down. — Philip Glass

My biggest problem about writing is whenever I write piano pieces, because I then have to learn to play them, which is sometimes not so easy. — Philip Glass

I've been called a minimalist composer for more than 30 years, and while I've never really agreed with the description, I've gotten used to it. — Philip Glass

The hardest thing about traveling is that mostly you get to a point - and it always happens on every tour - where you can choose between eating and sleeping, but you can't do both. — Philip Glass

Traditions are imploding and exploding everywhere - everything is coming together, for better or worse, and we can no longer pretend we're all living in different worlds because we're on different continents. — Philip Glass

I always knew what I wanted to do and I did it. — Philip Glass

The point was that the world of music - its language, beauty, and mystery - was already urging itself on me. Some shift had already begun. Music was no longer a metaphor for the real world somewhere out there. It was becoming the opposite. The "out there" stuff was the metaphor and the real part was, and is to this day, the music. — Philip Glass

The music that I was playing and writing in those early years, that I was importing to Europe, was quintessentially New York music in a way that I always hoped it would be. I wanted my concert music to be as distinctive as Zappa at the Fillmore East, and I think I ended up doing that. — Philip Glass

The work I've done is the work I know, and the work I do is the work I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. — Philip Glass

So the real drama for me is balancing live performances and writing, and one of the ways I balance it is I write in hotel rooms. That's not exactly balancing. Actually, writing in hotel rooms means that I'm refusing to deal with the problem. — Philip Glass

I don't know that I make a big distinction between the big pieces and the little pieces, because I don't experience them in that way. I mean, by the same token, you're out touring with a band and then you're writing string quartets, and in a funny way, isn't it all the same, in a way? It's all just music. — Philip Glass

Openings and closings, beginnings and endings. Everything in between passes as quickly as the blink of an eye. An eternity precedes the opening and another, if not the same, follows the closing. Somehow everything that lies in between seems for a moment more vivid. What is real to us becomes forgotten, and what we don't understand will be forgotten, too. — Philip Glass

In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with. — Philip Glass

What I've noticed is that people who love what they do, regardless of what that might be, tend to live longer. — Philip Glass

In retrospect, I think those people dressed in costumes walking up Montparnasse must have seen someting before anybody else did. When they looked at me and said, "This guy comes with us," I think it wasn't just an accident, it was as clear a sign as I would ever get that I was going to enter the life of the artist. I was going to disrobe myself, I was going to put on a new identity, I was going to be somebody else. — Philip Glass

If you remember your lineage, you will never feel lonely. — Philip Glass

If you don't know what to do, there's actually a chance of doing something new. — Philip Glass

I travel the world, and I'm happy to say that America is still the great melting pot - maybe a chunky stew rather than a melting pot at this point, but you know what I mean. — Philip Glass

The past is reinvented and becomes the future. But the lineage is everything. — Philip Glass

A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new. — Philip Glass

You practice and you get better. It's very simple. — Philip Glass

The problem with listening, of course, is that we don't. There's too much noise going on in our heads, so we never hear anything. The inner conversation simply never stops. It can be our voice or whatever voices we want to supply, but it's a constant racket. In the same way we don't see, and in the same way we don't feel, we don't touch, we don't taste. — Philip Glass

I shift between mediums very frequently. Instead of taking a break from writing, I just write in a different medium or in a different way or for a different purpose, so that I don't actually stop writing - I just go to something else. Like going from a big symphony to a piano piece is great and very refreshing, I find. And then going from that to a big concerto, and then having to go out and play. — Philip Glass

I'm interested in what happens to music when other people use it. Whereas there are composers who don't like anyone to touch their music, I think people should because they do things I can't think of. — Philip Glass

If you don't have a basis on which to make the choice, then you don't have a style at all. You have a series of accidents. — Philip Glass

The interview went well. I found him warm but not eager, friendly but slightly impersonal, and he answered all questions concerning music with an engaging straightforwardness. Nonmusical questions he either evaded with the skill of an expert, or ignored, apparently from lack of interest in the subjects broached. Already he had the gift of fielding impertinent questions by offering quotable evasions instead. For instance, I remember asking him if he was a religious person. He replied that he didn't want to talk about religion.
"Why not?" I pursued.
"Because my music is so very odd already that I see no reason to make myself sound any odder. — Philip Glass