Ned Rorem Quotations

Divine fires do not blaze each day, but an artist functions in their afterglow hoping for their recurrence.

Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Art means to dare - and to have been right.

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of

The twelve-toners behave as if music should be seen and not heard

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

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.

There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating.

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.

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.

Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.

The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.

To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.

So far as musical pedagogy is concerned - And by extension of musical creation - Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived

If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.

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.

All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.

The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.

Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.

Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.

Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.

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.

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.

Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.

Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it.

Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.

Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.

In music the present is extended.

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.

Compose first, worry later.

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.

If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.

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.

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

Anyone can be gay - it's no accomplishment - but only I can be me.

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.

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.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

Minor artists borrow, great ones steal.