Salieri Quotes & Sayings

The psychological detective story in "Equus" made Peter Shaffer's name as a playwright. But it was his next play, "Amadeus," that cemented his reputation, largely because of the movie version. Another battle of wills, it was the story of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart seen through the eyes of lesser composer Antonio Salieri. — Bob Mondello

I looked on astounded as from his ordinary life he made his art. We were both ordinary men, he and I. Yet from the ordinary he created Legends
and I from Legends created only the ordinary! — Peter Shaffer

I never thought I would write the way that I write for the studios now, which is like, not little novels, but be someone who literally is more like, you know, sometimes I guess we describe, we're more Salieri than Mozart. — Thomas Lennon

People realize that Salieri is not the man we saw in the Amadeus movie. That man had no talent. It was a great movie, but the Salieri character was a big fiction. — Cecilia Bartoli

Salieri was a pupil of Gluck. He was born in Italy in 1750 and died in Vienna in 1825. He left Italy when he was 16 and spent most of his life in Vienna. He's the key composer between classic music and romantic music. Beethoven was the beginning of romantic music, and he was the teacher of Beethoven and Schubert. — Cecilia Bartoli

FALSE EQUIVALENCY

If you compare the Koch brothers to George Soros and you compare MSNBC to FOX News then why not compare the NAACP to the Ku Klux Klan, George Washington to King George, Abraham Lincoln to Jefferson Davis, Barack Obama to Vladimir Putin;
If you compare the Democratic party to the Republican party then why not compare Citizens United with Brown versus Board of Education, Churchill to Mussolini, Martin Luther King to George Wallace;
If you compare Liberals to Conservatives then why not compare Boxing to Cage Fighting, Mozart to Salieri, Edward Kennedy Ellington to Lawrence Welk, Three Card Monty to Inside Trading, John Birks Gillespie to Cab Callaway;
If you are mentally slothful enough to engage in false equivalency, why not go all the way? Pretend that ignorance equates with knowledge, Science with Mythology and empathy with apathy? — E. Landon Hobgood

I never quite dare to believe I'm brave enough to be an artist, but I'm on the side of artists. I think of myself as a bit of a Salieri, looking with longing eyes at Mozart. — Stephen Fry

My reaction to Radiohead isn't as simple as jealousy. Jealousy just burns; Radiohead infuriate me. But if it were only that, I wouldn't go back and listen to those records again and again. Listening to Radiohead makes me fell like I'm a Salieri to their Mozart. Yorke's lyrics make me want to give up. I could never in my wildest dreams find something as beautiful as they find for a single song - let alone album after album. — Dave Matthews

As much preparation as I had made for the old man Salieri, gestures and so on, the fact is after sitting for hours, your movements are kind of slow. — F. Murray Abraham

There was a moment of extraordinary humbleness and humility and pride, as well, with my father when he turned to me - and I think it was after I played Salieri in "Amadeus" at university. And he said, You're better than I ever was or ever could be, you should do this for profession. You'd have a good time. — Benedict Cumberbatch

In Mozart and Salieri we see the contrast between the genius which does what it must and the talent which does what it can. — Maurice Baring

Once I looked into a mirror at my face I felt like it was completely convincing. I was Salieri. — F. Murray Abraham