The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations. — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist. — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual… — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion. — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich. — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer. — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
“Sooner or later you’ve heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love. The same holds… — Ned Rorem Copy Share Image
Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great. — Ned Rorem Copy Share
Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this. — Ned Rorem Copy Share
If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer. — Ned Rorem Copy Share
Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced. — Ned Rorem Copy Share
The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A… — Ned Rorem Copy Share
If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist. — Ned Rorem Copy Share
As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military… — Ned Rorem Copy Share
“We endow our poor lovers with godly traits, and then destroy them for being mortal. ” — Ned Rorem Copy Share
All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without. — Ned Rorem Copy Share
Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable. — Ned Rorem Copy Share
“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… — Ned Rorem Copy Share
To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time… — Ned Rorem Copy Share
