Quotes About Interpretation

I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.

The piece of music is nothing without the act of interpretation. That is the only way it can live, and it's a totally abstract thing.

Sometimes I think I was making music through the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning.

Writing is the same as music. It's in how you phrase it, how you hold back the note, bend it, shape it, then release it. And what you don't play is as important as what you do say.

When I started to play with my fingernails, it was not just for volume. The most important thing was giving the guitar different colors in its voices.

A lot of the hip hop artists don't write music. They write words.

Something new has been added, a new art of sound. Am I wrong in calling it music?

Music does not live until it's interpreted - with all of its flaws, mannerisms, etc. It needs to be incarnated to be something.

No one should be allowed to make music as if he were made of wood. One must reproduce the musical text exactly, but not play like a stone.

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

Music sounds different to the one who plays it. It is the musician's curse.

What we hear is the quality of our listening.

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.

I don't worry too much about the fundamentalist principles that are in almost any discussion about Jazz.

Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist.

Same thing with harmonies. If you hear something that harmonically is interesting, express it. So that's what I'm saying about talking the music rather than just playing through.

The greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out.

My belief is that the music is always stronger than the performer: there is always something new, something we learn, whether at a performance or during a rehearsal.

Creative Arts raise a person to another level of consciousness as if you could imagine life before words.

I listen to a piece of music and really get inside it and let it suggest a little universe to create.

Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.

I think of painting without subject matter as music without words.

On acting to daughter Isabella Rossellini: Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.