Quotes from Ned Rorem

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.

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

To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

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.

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.

Divine fires do not blaze each day, but an artist functions in their afterglow hoping for their recurrence.

Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it.

Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.

Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.

Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.

Art means to dare - and to have been right.

Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of

Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.

Artists by definition innocent don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

Classic means standard as opposed to Romantic: form before meaning as opposed to meaning before form. It grows from inside out while Romantic grows from outside in.

The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.

The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.