Leonard Bernstein quotes - page 2

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers. (Leonard Bernstein)
Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
To be a success as a Broadway composer, you must be Jewish or gay. I'm both. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
I believe that man's noblest endowment is his capacity to change. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
Success is all very well as long as you don't inhale. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us, all of you, are endowed with the powers of fantasy. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
Conducting is like making love to a hundred people at the same time. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's - the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering - a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it. (Leonard Bernstein)
Any asshole can write a tone-row. It takes a composer to write a tune. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
It would be nice to hear someone accidentally whistle something of mine, somewhere, just once. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
I have two answers to everything and one answer to nothing. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
If you're a good composer, you steal good steals. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
I hate you, Richard Wagner . . . but I hate you on my knees. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
Wine snobbery, of course, is part showmanship, part sophistication, part knowledge, and part bluff. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
Even experimental composers, revolutionary composers, self-styled radicals are, in writing revolutionary music, recognizing the music that preceded them precisely by trying to avoid it. View quote
Leonard Bernstein
...we can all shut-up and go back to our caves. (Leonard Bernstein)