Ned Rorem Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Ned Rorem's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Composer Ned Rorem's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 43 quotes on this page collected since October 23, 1923! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
All quotes by Ned Rorem: Art Memories Music more...
  • Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

    Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.
  • Divine fires do not blaze each day but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence.

    "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
  • Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.

    Art   Hero   Perfect  
    Ned Rorem (1974). “The final diary, 1961-1972”
  • Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.

    Art   Vanity   Views  
    Ned Rorem (2013). “Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary”, p.110, Open Road Media
  • Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

    Ned Rorem (2000). “Lies: A Diary, 1986-1999”, Counterpoint Press
  • Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.

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

    Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.118, Open Road Media
  • 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.

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

    Ned Rorem (2013). “An Absolute Gift: A New Diary”, p.37, Open Road Media
  • Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.

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

    Ned Rorem (2001). “A Ned Rorem Reader”, p.26, Yale University Press
  • Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.

    Ned Rorem (2013). “Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary”, p.324, Open Road Media
  • All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.

    Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.136, Open Road Media
  • Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.

    Ned Rorem (2013). “Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary”, p.149, Open Road Media
  • If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.

    Mean  
    Ned Rorem (1970). “Critical Affairs: A Composer's Journal”, George Braziller
  • Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.

    Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.69, Open Road Media
  • 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.

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

    Ned Rorem (2013). “Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary”, p.71, Open Road Media
  • 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.

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

    Ned Rorem (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.53, Open Road Media
  • 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.

  • 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.

    Mean  
    Ned Rorem (2013). “The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem: 1961–1972”, p.259, Open Road Media
  • 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 (2013). “The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem: 1961–1972”, p.97, Open Road Media
  • Minor artists borrow, great ones steal.

    Ned Rorem (2013). “Knowing When to Stop: A Memoir”, p.83, Open Road Media
  • 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 (2013). “The Paris Diary & The New York Diary: 1951–1961”, p.49, Open Road Media
  • Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.

    Ned Rorem (2013). “The Later Diaries of Ned Rorem: 1961–1972”, p.65, Open Road Media
  • Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.

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

  • 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.

  • In music the present is extended.

    Ned Rorem (2013). “Knowing When to Stop: A Memoir”, p.326, Open Road Media
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 43 quotes from the Composer Ned Rorem, starting from October 23, 1923! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    Ned Rorem quotes about: Art Memories Music