Ned Rorem quotes
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“Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2001). “A Ned Rorem Reader”, p.26, Yale University Press
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“Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2000). “Lies: A Diary, 1986-1999”, Counterpoint Press
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“Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“Divine fires do not blaze each day, but an artist functions in their afterglow hoping for their recurrence.”
-- Ned Rorem -
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“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.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem: 1961–1972”, p.102, Open Road Media
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“Art means to dare - and to have been right.”
-- Ned RoremSource : W Magazine, October 10, 1980.
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“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.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.136, Open Road Media
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“The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem: 1961–1972”, p.70, Open Road Media
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“Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary”, p.245, Open Road Media
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“If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary”, p.337, Open Road Media
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“To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.”
-- Ned Rorem -
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“Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.14, Open Road Media
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“Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.53, Open Road Media
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“Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.”
-- Ned Rorem -
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“The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem: 1961–1972”, p.63, Open Road Media
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“Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“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.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.”
-- Ned Rorem -
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“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.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“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.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem: 1961–1972”, p.97, Open Road Media
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“The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.118, Open Road Media
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“Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.”
-- Ned Rorem -
“Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.”
-- Ned Rorem -
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“Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary”, p.149, Open Road Media
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“In music the present is extended.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “Knowing When to Stop: A Memoir”, p.326, Open Road Media
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“Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.”
-- Ned RoremSource : Ned Rorem (2013). “Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary”, p.110, Open Road Media
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“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.”
-- Ned Rorem -
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“So far as musical pedagogy is concerned - And by extension of musical creation - Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived”
-- Ned Rorem
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