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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
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More quotes by Ned Rorem

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