Alfred Brendel Quotes

#1. I want to make music. That means I prefer the Steinway piano.

Alfred Brendel

#2. The proud heart of man is very anxious to have a hand in the justification of the soul before God;

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

#3. Art gives a sense of order, life is basically chaotic, and there's a tension between them. A sense of order comes from chaos and contains a bit of it, but it's the sense of order that is important in a work of art ...

Alfred Brendel

#4. I have a great need to learn what the norm is by dealing with what is not the norm ... with the grotesque and the fantastic.

Alfred Brendel

#5. If you aren't unhappy sometimes you don't know how to be happy.

Madeleine L'Engle

#6. You need three or five hands to play Ligeti.

Alfred Brendel

#7. You are such a chick."
I widened my eyes in mock surprise.
"No way. Are you sure?

Gena Showalter

#8. Americans are the great Satan, the wounded snake.

Ruhollah Khomeini

#9. Silence ... is the essence of the music itself, the vital ingredient that makes it possible for the music to exist at all.

Alfred Brendel

#10. If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.

Alfred Brendel

#11. The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent.'

Alfred Brendel

#12. A work of art is like a person: it has more than one soul in its breast.

Alfred Brendel

#13. Protectionism does not produce wealth, and free trade and economic openness are ultimately in everyone's interest

Thomas Piketty

#14. God never can use any man very much till he has grace enough to forget himself entirely while doing God's work; for He will not give His glory to another nor share with the most valued instrument the praise that belongs to Jesus Christ alone.

A.B. Simpson

#15. I will be acquitted and vindicated when the truth is told.

Michael Jackson

#16. Silence ought also to be the core of each concert. Remember the anagram: listen = silent.

Alfred Brendel

#17. You have to be aware of all the latent possibilities that give a work its special character - its atmosphere, its moods, its contrasts.

Alfred Brendel

#18. The best antidote to stress is resilience ... having the ability to respond to change or adversity proactively and resourcefully.

Lauren Mackler