Ned Rorem
Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.Collection: Humor
Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.
Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.
Art means to dare - and to have been right.
The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of.
Divine fires do not blaze each day, but an artist functions in their afterglow hoping for their recurrence.
Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Rome
Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.Collection: Memories
Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.Collection: Art
Divine fires do not blaze each day but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence.Collection: Artist
The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.Collection: Beautiful
If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.Collection: Music
composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.Collection: Thinking
The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.Collection: Art
Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it.Collection: Love
If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Writing
Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.Collection: Silence
Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.Collection: Ballet
All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.Collection: Men
To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Memories
Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.Collection: Artist
Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.Collection: Art
Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.Collection: Real
The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak ofCollection: Art
Anyone can be gay - it's no accomplishment - but only I can be me.Collection: Gay
Compose first, worry later.Collection: Worry
The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.Collection: Needs
Minor artists borrow, great ones steal.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Artist
There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating.Collection: People
Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.Collection: Inspiration
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Creative
Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Strong
Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Military
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.Collection: Half
Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.Collection: Music
Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.Collection: Music