Quotes by Composers - Page 2

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

Charlie Chaplin

A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

Frank Zappa

I have inflammation of the imagination.

Lera Auerbach

Verily, a man should not cling to those who have passed, for he will likely neglect service to the living.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

So if you care to find me/Look to the western sky/As someone told me lately/Everyone deserves the chance to fly!/And if I'm flying solo/At least I'm flying free/Tell those who'd ground me/Take a message back from me/Tell them how I am defying gravity!/I'm flying high defying gravity/And soon I'll match them in renown./And nobody in all of Oz/No Wizard that there is or was/Is ever gonna bring me down!/

Stephen Schwartz

He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking.

Paul Bowles

The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possessions of Helen, or the throne of the Universe, had been at stake.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[T]he man who meditates is a depraved animal.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Time alone is the gift of self-entertainment - and that is the font of creativity

Lin-Manuel Miranda

The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it.

Anthony Burgess

To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

Anthony Burgess

So we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchocks, but he still went on singing.

Anthony Burgess

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart..

Pablo Casals

Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.

Anthony Burgess

The path to happiness at work starts with a simple decision: You must want to be happy. If you don’t commit to being happy at work, you won’t be. You won’t make the choices that make you happy. You won’t take the actions needed to get there. You won’t change the things that need to change.

Alexander Kjerulf

The true artist is not proud, he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal; and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun. I would, perhaps, rather come to you and your people, than to many rich folk who display inward poverty.

Ludwig van Beethoven

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

Frank Zappa

The future begins today.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Do not dismiss the words of the old; they possess wisdom, which comes only with age, and often speak of things that the young are too immature to understand.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.

Paul Bowles

Verily, a man without fear is either dead or happy to die.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, 'All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

Frank Zappa

I know that [civilized men] do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose they enjoy in their chains.... But when I see [barbarous man] sacrifice pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

There are few things worse than mistaking an enemy for a friend.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Frank Zappa

Trends of the times be damned.

Robert Glasper

See, happiness at work is an emotion. It comes from inside of you, and like all other emotions it is difficult to define, but inescapable once it’s present. Or not present. Can you define love? Poets have tried for thousands of years and aren’t getting much closer. But when you’re feeling love, you’re acutely aware of it, even though you have no formal definition.

Alexander Kjerulf

The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience.

William Herschel

I choose me bristles with prideYes, I doA broom for the shaftAnd a broom for the flumeThough I'm covered with soot From me 'ead to me toesA sweep knows 'e's welcomeWherever 'e goes

Richard M. Sherman

Is my coitus whimsically inventive?

Chuck Lorre

Art is not an end in itself but a means of addressing humanity.

Modest Mussorgsky

Work is more fun than fun.

Noël Coward

nothing is accomplished by writing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by hearing a piece of musicnothing is accomplished by playing a piece of musicour ears are now in excellent condition.

John Cage

To accept whatever comes regardless of the consequences is to be unafraid.

John Cage

I would say that Op 31 had brought music just to the very edge … I just simply drew back and said, “beyond that lies complete chaos”.

Leo Ornstein

Music without the ebb and flow would be like "watching a film with only good guys in it." -attrib Frank Zappa

John Powell

My idea of success has little to do with fame. I just wanted to know if I could play with the best musicians in the business.

Artie Kane

Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.

Paul Bowles

Loneliness is the prison of the human spirit. When we are lonely, we pace back and forth in small, shut-in worlds.

John Powell

Ah, fairest maiden, thine beauty doth maketh mine loins stir, and mine cup runneth over.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

What? Quinn's one of them? I just thought he was an a*shole!

Simon Holt

The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.

John Cage

Anytime you write something, you go through so many phases. You go through the I’m a Fraud phase. You go through the I’ll Never Finish phase. And every once in a while you think, What if I actually have created what I set out to create, and it’s received as such?

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Princes always are always happy to see developing among their subjects the taste for agreeable arts and for superfluities which do not result in the export of money. For quite apart from the fact that with these they nourish that spiritual pettiness so appropriate for servitude, they know very well that all the needs which people give themselves are so many chains binding them. When Alexander wished to keep the Ichthyophagi dependent on him, he forced them to abandon fishing and to nourish themselves on foods common to other people. And no one has been able to subjugate the savages in America, who go around quite naked and live only from what their hunting provides. In fact, what yoke could be imposed on men who have no need of anything?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The downtrodden who are the great creators of slang hurl pithiness and colour at poverty and oppression.

Anthony Burgess

Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants.

John Cage

From a pound of iron, that costs little, a thousand watch-springs can be made, whose value becomes prodigious. The pound you have received from the Lord,--use it faithfully.

Robert Schumann

I was brought up Christian, then I was agnostic and then I realized I was atheist... This movie [Agora] is about fundamentalism and hate.

Alejandro Amenábar

Will we reach a friendlier shore?Will we find a haven once more?Where we'll beIn a place of miraclesNow we leave our homeFor a place of miracles Romanies again must roamCould there be a country kinder to our race?In a place of miracles

Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz

A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible.

Anthony Burgess

What sort of world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning round the earth like it might be midges round a lamp, and there's not no attention paid to earthly law nor order no more.

Anthony Burgess

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.

Ned Rorem

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in business. You've got to keep working that talent.

Irving Berlin

For the record, folks; I never took a shit on stage and the closest I ever came to eating shit anywhere was at a Holiday Inn buffet in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1973.

Frank Zappa

Strange how potent cheap music is.

Noël Coward

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Those who do not care, escape the anguish of mourning but never know the delights of love. The meaning of life forever eludes them.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

No regrets. There is no time for that. Regret is boring.

A.R. Rahman

As a working professional in the entertainment industry, I have come to truly cherish both my creative freedom and my independence. Because I, for one, know how precious and priceless they are.

Cat Ellington

Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived..." (Bk2:3)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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