Quote

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

Ned Rorem

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ned Rorem
Age: 100
Born: 1923
Born: October 23
Actor
Composer
Diarist
University Teacher
Writer
Richmond
Indiana
Ned Rorem
Vaulting
Pole
Ballet
Opera
Musical

More quotes by Ned Rorem

Image
Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.
Ned Rorem
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.
Ned Rorem
Image
Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.
Ned Rorem
Image
Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.
Ned Rorem
Image
In music the present is extended.
Ned Rorem
Image
Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.
Ned Rorem
Image
Compose first, worry later.
Ned Rorem
Image
Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.
Ned Rorem
Image
All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.
Ned Rorem
Image
To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.
Ned Rorem
Image
Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.
Ned Rorem
Image
Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.
Ned Rorem
Image
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.
Ned Rorem
Image
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
Image
composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.
Ned Rorem
Image
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.
Ned Rorem
Image
Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.
Ned Rorem
Image
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.
Ned Rorem