Quotes from Ned Rorem

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

Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love. The same holds true for music.

How many thousands have I spent on perfume and alcohol, cigarettes and Turkish baths, disappointing trips and third-class movies; how many months in silent bars or parks, expecting, in a chair with a book not reading, or waiting in line, waiting in line? Who will tell me it's a loss when I know life must be for pleasure? The parks were balanced by museums, the baths by oceans, bars by composition, and the dreaming chair by books finished. Nothing is waste that makes a memory.

We endow our poor lovers with godly traits, and then destroy them for being mortal.

There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating.

Art means to dare — and to have been right.

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