Quotes - Music and Art

"Talent is like electricity. We don't understand electricity, we just use it." -Maya Angelou

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end." -Igor Stravinsky

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music." -Vladimir Nabokov

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness." -Maya Angelou

"Music does two things - It dances or it sings" -Jack Stamp (SoMMA)

"Music takes something that is black and white and changes it to colors." -Jack Stamp (SoMMA)

"Use what talent you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best." -Henry Van Dyke

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -Aldous Huxley

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent." -Victor Hugo

"The difference between an amateur musician and a professional is that the amateur practices until they get it right. The professional practices until they can't get it wrong." -Jack Stamp (SoMMA)

"There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun." -Pablo Picasso

"Art is a higher type of knowledge than experience." -Aristotle

"where words fail, music speaks." -Hans Christian Anderson

"Music is a necessary, vital force, affecting one's current mood and state of mind." -Herb Galewitz

"There's no such thing as a new melody. Our work is to connect the old phrases, so that they will sound like a new tune." -Irving Berlin

"There are two golden rules for an orchestra…start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between." -Sir Thomas Beecham

"When you got to ask what (jazz) is, you'll never get to know." -Louis Armstrong

"Show me an orchestra that likes its conductor and I'll show you a lousy conductor." -Goddard Lieberson

"Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously." -Henry Miller

"Music is for certain among us, more than a please; it is a necessity." -Romain Rolland

"If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist." -Ned Rorem

"Without music, life would be a mistake." -Nietzsche

"All the I am trying to point out is in general that life imitates art far more than art imitates life." -Oscar Wilde

"Don't look at the trombones, you'll only encourage them." -Richard Strauss