Ned Rorem Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ned Rorem
To the social-minded, a definition for Concert is: that which surrounds an intermission.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ned Rorem
It isn't evil that is ruining the earth, but mediocrity.

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

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

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

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 Rorem
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 Rorem