Quotes from Gian Carlo Menotti

I know of no better definition of love than the one given by Proust - Love is space and time measured by the heart.

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

One lived in the impression that nobody could ever compete with the 'Nutcracker' or 'A Christmas Carol.'

Love is born of faith, lives on hope, and dies of charity.

I have a heart problem, so I have to simplify my life and be content with memories and friends and music.

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.

I thought conceptual art was a joke.

Writing beautiful melodies is not fashionable because it is very difficult to do.

God gives you the gift of melody or He doesn't - it's as simple as that.

I rebelled against the idea of the artist being what I call the 'after-dinner mint' of society. I didn't want them to be just the entertainers, but rather part of the community - the bread, not only the dessert.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do

I loathe my body. The liver spots, the sagging flesh.

I guess I am running the risk of becoming the Hans Christian Andersen of opera.

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.