Composing Quotes

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style. (Sydney Smith)
The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself...Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel. View quote
George Gershwin
Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you. View quote
Gustav Holst
Film composing is a splendid discipline, and I recommend a course of it to all composition teachers whose pupils are apt to be dawdling in their ideas, or whose every bar is sacred and must not be cut or altered. View quote
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Nations are not truly great solely because the individuals composing them are numerous, free, and active; but they are great when these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary man, taken by himself. View quote
Matthew Arnold
I fear I shall never be...good for anything in this world, but composing airs, building towers, forming gardens, collecting old Japan, and writing a journey to China or the Moon. View quote
William Thomas Beckford
The song we're composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it. View quote
Steven Pressfield
You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous. View quote
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done. View quote
Franz Schubert
I was...attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing "simple” music, blamed for deserting "modernism,” accused of renouncing my "true Russian heritage.” People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried "sacrilege”: "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone.” To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect,” but I love. View quote
Igor Stravinsky
We thought: we're poor, we have nothing, but when we started losing one after the other so each day became remembrance day, we started composing poems about God's great generosity and - our former riches. (Anna Akhmatova)
I like composing music, but I love being with my family. View quote
Ennio Morricone
There are people who must spend huge amounts of time composing these online diatribes against me, all about how disgusting and terrible I am and how no one should ever read my books, and it's not enough for them to hate me, they can't stand the fact that ANYONE likes me! View quote
Poppy Z. Brite
Composing is like driving down a foggy road toward a house. Slowly you see more details of the house-the color of the slates and bricks, the shape of the windows. The notes are the bricks and the mortar of the house. View quote
Benjamin Britten
The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French. View quote
Cecilia Bartoli
There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it. View quote
Clara Schumann
I was very committed to the process of composing, working at poems, putting things together and taking them apart like some kind of experimental filmmaker. View quote
David Antin
While it is true that Frank had a great sense of humor, he was also very serious about composing music. In reality there are only a handful of skilled players who can play his most complex pieces. It takes a lot of patience to learn and requires a fantastic memory. View quote
Dweezil Zappa
There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will. View quote
Esa-Pekka Salonen
I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano. View quote
Gordon Getty
As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe - we are happiest when we are creating. (Gary Hamel)
I used to look at composing music as problem solving. But as I get older, it's not about problem solving anymore. There are no solutions, because there are no problems. You just turn the tap and it flows out. View quote
John Zorn
Yes, sampling has changed not just my way of playing and composing. View quote
Klaus Schulze
Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been. View quote
Lukas Foss
When I am seriously composing, sometimes a phrase will come into my head, a catch phrase. When I was writing pop songs for a few years, as a career, separate from my folksinging career, I used to write songs for pop singers. View quote
Tom Glazer