Musicians

“Die Emanzipation der Dissonanz bedeutet, dass Dissonanzen nicht mehr als auflösungsbedürftig behandelt werden.”

“The emancipation of the dissonance means that dissonances are no longer treated as requiring resolution. They are free to exist on their own terms, as consonances always have been. This is not chaos — it is a broader understanding of harmony.”

“If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.”

“I find it so amazing that people find it so amazing that I should write my own songs.”

“How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”

“Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.”

“I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.”

“Сила музыки в том, что она может передать то, что не могут слова. Мелодия может выразить то, что не может ни речь, ни живопись, ни поэзия. И в стране, где слова опасны, музыка становится единственным честным языком.”

“The power of music is that it can convey something that words cannot. A melody can express what no speech, no painting, no poem can. And in a country where words are dangerous, music becomes the only honest language.”

“Use your faults, use your defects; then you're going to be a star.”

“Before I compose a piece, I walk around it several times, accompanied by myself.”

“Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.”

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”

“The justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”

“Wenn ein Komponist das, was er zu sagen hat, in Worte fassen könnte, würde er sich nicht die Mühe machen, es in Musik zu sagen.”

“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”

“To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.”

“I was obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well.”

“I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it.”

“You can play a shoestring if you're sincere.”

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”

“We are stardust, we are golden, / And we've got to get ourselves / Back to the garden.”

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal.”

“Ich will dem Schicksal in den Rachen greifen; ganz niederbeugen soll es mich gewiss nicht.”

“I will seize fate by the throat; it shall certainly never wholly overcome me.”

“An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down.”

“I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.”

“Grief and love are forever intertwined. Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves. We are tiny, trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief's awesome presence.”

“An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.”

“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.”

“I found a piano that had been drowned in the tsunami, totally out of tune. I thought it was beautiful. Nature tuned it.”

“The piano ain't got no wrong notes.”

“The biggest enemy of creativity is self-doubt.”