Alan Hovhaness Quotes

#1. I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn't know anything about it.

Alan Hovhaness

#2. If someone has offended you, insulted you, or disappointed you, let it go! If you are remembering all the ways you have been hurt or forgotten, let it go! Ask yourself, what good does it do for me to hold on to this?

Iyanla Vanzant

#3. This is not to say that the Scots are not fine people, but they were all sort of ... well, my grandfather was a minister and sort of Protestant, and this was rather depressing to me.

Alan Hovhaness

#4. My mother's background was Scottish. She came from an old family, some of whom lived in upper New York State and some of whom had come over from Scotland.

Alan Hovhaness

#5. you know that a soldier is the most holy of all humans because he is the most tested - most tested of all. I'll try to tell you. Look now - in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man

John Steinbeck

#6. The law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.

Isaac Asimov

#7. There were periods when I sometimes made fires in a large, open fireplace that lasted about two weeks, which was how long it took to burn my compositions. So there has been an awful lot that I have destroyed.

Alan Hovhaness

#8. I love to run. When the weather's bad, I should get on the treadmill in the basement gym of my apartment building, but I lack the motivation.

Tom Riley

#9. I came to terms with not fitting in a long time ago. I never really fitted in. I don't want to fit in. And now people are buying into that.

Alexander McQueen

#10. I think that of my 21 symphonies, each has its own place.

Alan Hovhaness

#11. When I left 'American Morning' in 2007, I'd focused on doing documentaries. But I thought 'Starting Point' was a great opportunity to be involved in the zeitgeist.

Soledad O'Brien

#12. The composer ... joins Heaven and Earth with threads of sounds.

Alan Hovhaness

#13. I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God.

Alan Hovhaness

#14. I find no fault with the Constitution or laws of our country, they are good enough. It is the abuse of those laws which I despise, and which God, good men and angels abhor.

Brigham Young

#15. I was born in Somerville, but I don't remember very much about it because we moved from there to Arlington when I was five years old, and it was in Arlington that I spent most of my childhood.

Alan Hovhaness

#16. The greater the emotional intensity, the greater the simplicity.

Alan Hovhaness

#17. It's hard for me to think of others because I'm not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

Alan Hovhaness

#18. We were in opposition to the decision to go to war. But after the war happened, it was clear that you could not sit and look-there would be a breeding ground for terrorism or a new collapsed or failed state named Iraq!

Joschka Fischer

#19. To me, atonality is against nature. There is a center to everything that exists. The planets have the sun, the earth, the moon.

Alan Hovhaness

#20. If you know the mother's genome and the father's genome, and you see that the children have some genes that neither parent has, then you know that difference is either a mutation or a processing error.

Leroy Hood

#21. My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing. To attempt what old Chinese painters called 'spirit resonance' in melody and sound.

Alan Hovhaness

#22. The Carpenters had a threshold more solid and extensive than the Great Wall of China. I would not be in the least bit surprised if you could see it from space.

Jim Butcher

#23. I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.

Alan Hovhaness

#24. There is nothing like practice.

Alan Hovhaness

#25. I did all kinds of things in order to earn a living.

Alan Hovhaness

#26. And I didn't tell mom what happened. She'd already warned me that bad things could hide in the most unlikely places.

Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

#27. No, no, I didn't know him. He lost his mind around 1917 because of the tragedy of the Armenians.

Alan Hovhaness