1.
Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.
Ned Rorem
2.
Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.
Ned Rorem
3.
Divine fires do not blaze each day but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence.
Ned Rorem
4.
Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.
Ned Rorem
5.
It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.
Ned Rorem
6.
Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.
Ned Rorem
7.
If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.
Ned Rorem
8.
The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.
Ned Rorem
9.
Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.
Ned Rorem
10.
The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.
Ned Rorem
11.
composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.
Ned Rorem
12.
To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time for registering those of yesterday.
Ned Rorem
13.
Quarrels in France strengthen a love affair, in America they end it.
Ned Rorem
14.
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 deceptive memory may be the key to their originality.
Ned Rorem
15.
So far as musical pedagogy is concerned -
And by extension of musical creation -
Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived
Ned Rorem
16.
Art means to dare - and to have been right.
Ned Rorem
17.
Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.
Ned Rorem
18.
An artist doesn't necessarily have deeper feelings than other people, but he can express these feelings. He is like everyone else-only more so! He speaks with a Formal Sigh.
Ned Rorem
19.
There are no fascinating people, only their works are fascinating.
Ned Rorem
20.
Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes.
Ned Rorem
21.
To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.
Ned Rorem
22.
The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.
Ned Rorem
23.
Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.
Ned Rorem
24.
In music the present is extended.
Ned Rorem
25.
If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.
Ned Rorem
26.
Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.
Ned Rorem
27.
All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.
Ned Rorem
28.
Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.
Ned Rorem
29.
Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.
Ned Rorem
30.
The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of
Ned Rorem
31.
Sooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.
Ned Rorem
32.
Minor artists borrow, great ones steal.
Ned Rorem
33.
Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.
Ned Rorem
34.
Anyone can be gay - it's no accomplishment - but only I can be me.
Ned Rorem
35.
Compose first, worry later.
Ned Rorem
36.
I don't go to concerts much. I've heard everything. When I do go to movies, I walk out half the time. As for literature, I've read everything.
Ned Rorem
37.
If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest . . . she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.
Ned Rorem
38.
If you read reviews of concerts, the word 'creative' comes up all the time. However, performers playing music usually aren't creative. Critics might say they are, but they're just playing another persons work. They didn't create it.
Ned Rorem
39.
As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military when they should be using that same energy getting rid of the military completely.
Ned Rorem
40.
Classic means standard as opposed to Romantic: form before meaning as opposed to meaning before form. It grows from inside out, while Romantic grows from outside in.
Ned Rorem
41.
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
42.
Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.
Ned Rorem
43.
Love is a mystery which, when solved, evaporates. The same holds for music.
Ned Rorem