Quotes by Composers

I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles.

To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.

A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.

When I was young” … “Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus, it would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth” – she hesitated.Port laughed abruptly. – “And now you know it’s not like that. Right? It’s more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tasted wonderful, and you don’t even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it’s nearly burned down to the end. And then’s when you’re conscious of the bitter taste.

Paul Bowles

He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.(on Liszt)

Clara Schumann

There's a little war in progress here. There won't be anything left of the place if it goes on at this rate." (But it's hard to feign innocence if you've eaten the apple, he reflected.) "And it looks to me as if it is going to go on, because the French aren't going to give in, and certainly the Arabs aren't, because they can't. They're fighting with their backs the the wall.""I thought maybe you meant you expected a new world war," he lied."That's the least of my worries. When that comes, we've had it. You can't sit around mooning about Judgement Day. That's just silly. Everybody who ever lived has always had his own private Judgment Day to face anyway, and he still has. As far as that goes, nothing's changed at all.

Paul Bowles

I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: “Things will be better when you die,” the people of my grandma’s generation said as they worked themselves to death. “God wants you to forgive and love those who do you wrong,” some people said to shake off the shame of being unable to respond to the abuse they endured. The holier-than-thou faction found comfort in believing, “The rest of y’all are lost because you don’t have a personal relationship with God—our God.” But art engages you in the world, not just the world around you but the big world, and not just the big world of Tokyo and Sydney and Johannesburg, but the bigger world of ideas and concepts and feelings of history and humanity.

Wynton Marsalis

I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.

Brian Eno

Love is a rare and precious thing. Squander it at your peril.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.

William Herschel

To dispense knowledge without moral guidance would be grossly irresponsible.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Fear sees, even when eyes are closed.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

The eternal sea of politics is best left to politicians.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

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

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Sometimes people with low self-esteem will try to punish you for caring about them.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

There are those who will resent you for not being confined by their limitations.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

A place without meaning is no place to be.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

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

Try to show grace, mercy and compassion, for one day you may need them.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

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

Wayne Gerard Trotman

The future begins today.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly - that business about marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain.

Anthony Burgess

Where there is great love there is great harmony of thought.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments.

Hector Berlioz

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

Pablo Casals

A disloyal friend is no friend.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

If you're with someone, but you're constantly worried about what they think of you, you're with the wrong person.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

This world needs much more kissing and far less fighting.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Ironically your greatest spiritual asset is what appears to be your greatest obstacle: your obsession with yourself. Today we live in the age of individualism. – Richard Harvey

Richard Harvey

I think you inhaled too much lead from those scantron sheets

Simon Holt

Lusty blacksmiths and naughty princesses. Now that's scary

Simon Holt

Collaborations are the black holes of knowledge regimes. They willingly produce nothingness, opulence and ill behavior. And it is their very vacuity that is their strength...It does not entail the transmission of something from those who have to those who do not, but rather the setting in motion of a chain of unforeseen accesses.

Florian Schneider

Got no checkbooks, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I've got the sun in the mornin' and the moon at night.

Irving Berlin