All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.
Ned RoremWhy, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.
Ned RoremDivine fires do not blaze each day but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence.
Ned RoremThe same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.
Ned RoremIf 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 RoremArguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.
Ned RoremSooner or later you've heard all your best friends have to say. Then comes the tolerance of real love.
Ned RoremIntelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this.
Ned RoremArt's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.
Ned RoremI 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 RoremThe beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.
Ned Roremcomposition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.
Ned RoremTo see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.
Ned RoremIf a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.
Ned RoremAn 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 RoremThe 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 RoremIf 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 RoremDon't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.
Ned RoremPerfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.
Ned RoremGreatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.
Ned RoremIt'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 RoremAs 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 RoremThe hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of
Ned Rorem