The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity. — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to… — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long… — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist... Beethoven could have been forgiven if… — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something. — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
It's about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over. — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
I don't know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel's Bolero. Too bad -… — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I… — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don't succeed, I consider it my own fault. — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the… — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I… — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true! — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music. — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward. — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on… — Dmitri Shostakovich Copy Share Image
