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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

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Ned Rorem
Age: 101
Born: 1923
Born: October 23
Actor
Composer
Diarist
University Teacher
Writer
Richmond
Indiana
Ned Rorem
Long
Fiction
Favorite
Evenings
Would
Five
Ten
Evoke
Love
American
Artists
Latest
Life
Strong
Writers
Tale
Artist
Short
List
Death
Asked
Lists
Two
Married
Tales
Gail
Book
Among
Evening
Evokes

More quotes by Ned Rorem

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Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.
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Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.
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Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.
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Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.
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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.
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Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.
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Art means to dare - and to have been right.
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Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.
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So far as musical pedagogy is concerned - And by extension of musical creation - Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived
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In music the present is extended.
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Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.
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Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.
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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.
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composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.
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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.
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Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.
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Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.
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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
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To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.
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Compose first, worry later.
Ned Rorem