John Adams Composer Quotes & Sayings

I fretted myself about the mistakes of government, like other people; but finding myself every day grow more angry, and the government growing no better, I left it to mend itself. — Oliver Goldsmith

As a composer, I believe that music has the power to inspire a renewal of human consciousness, culture, and politics. And yet I refuse to make political art. More often than not political art fails as politics, and all too often it fails as art. To reach its fullest power, to be most moving and most fully useful to us, art must be itself. — John Luther Adams

I didn't grow up imagining myself as an opera composer. Only once in my entire adolescence did I attend an opera. I went and saw Aida at the old Met, didn't understand a thing about it, and thought it was pretty awful. But I think I had it in my genes without even realising it. — John Adams

I always think of my films within the context of where aesthetics meet economics. That's the nature of making art - not being naive about what is possible and getting what you need to tell the story you want to tell. — Ira Sachs

Actually I never make a mistake, because it takes a huge effort for me to make a mistake. — Johan Cruijff

Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful. — Chandler Burr

Imitate, assimilate, and innovate. — Clark Terry

I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will. — Margaret Atwood

The thought of hurting him ripped me apart. Ripped me so totally, that I knew, I cared more for him than I did myself. — Samantha Young