George Crumb Quotes

#1. I have observed, too, that the people of the many countries that I have visited are showing an ever increasing interest in the classical and traditional music of their own cultures.

George Crumb

#2. First Lady Michelle Obama has posted an exercise video of her beating up a punching bag. But don't worry, Vice President Biden is going to be OK.

Conan O'Brien

#3. Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature.

George Crumb

#4. Nonetheless, I sense that it will be the task of the future to somehow synthesize the sheer diversity of our present resources into a more organic and well-ordered procedure.

George Crumb

#5. I pick up the New York Times or Time and it's talking about the latest rock group, which I'm sure is exciting to some people, but it neglects a huge area of music.

George Crumb

#6. The future will be the child of the past and the present, even if a rebellious child.

George Crumb

#7. If we look at music history closely, it is not difficult to isolate certain elements of great potency which were to nourish the art of music for decades, if not centuries.

George Crumb

#8. I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.

George Crumb

#9. One very important aspect of our contemporary musical culture - some might say the supremely important aspect - is its extension in the historical and geographical senses to a degree unknown in the past.

George Crumb

#10. Most of my influences are turn-of-the-century.

George Crumb

#11. Moral codes and standards in our societies very rarely apply to all people equally. This is the most damning proof of how immoral such codes and standards really are.

Nawal El Saadawi

#12. The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.

George Crumb

#13. I think we're in a very low point of music right now.

George Crumb

#14. Unquestionably, our contemporary world of music is far richer, in a sense, than earlier periods, due to the historical and geographical extensions of culture to which I have referred.

George Crumb

#15. Music might be defined as a system of proportions in the service of a spiritual impulse

George Crumb

#16. It is easy to write unthinking music.

George Crumb

#17. To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all.

Randall Jarrell

#18. This is not a happy time for this kind of music in this country.

George Crumb

#19. I believe that music surpasses even language in its power to mirror the innermost recesses of the human soul

George Crumb

#20. I am optimistic about the future of music.

George Crumb

#21. Perhaps of all the most basic elements of music, rhythm most directly affects our central nervous system.

George Crumb

#22. You know, you've got serious pieces, you've got light pieces, you've got cooking segments, you've got health-related topics, so it's not as if they've had a unique personality from the get-go.

Katie Couric

#23. As interesting as that music can occasionally be, I don't think it really replaces the other.

George Crumb

#24. The day you start falling in love, with the wrecked homes and broken windows instead of running away from them. You will find a story that fills your soul, behind every burnt door.

Akshay Vasu

#25. Writing seems to be more difficult as you move through the years.

George Crumb

#26. I must confess, my Spanish is not so good - except I read a little, so I started with the English but then determined that it would have to be in Spanish.

George Crumb

#27. A crumb is a great thing: If you break a crumb in half, you don't get two half-crumbs, you get two crumbs. Doesn't that violate some law of physics?

George Carlin

#28. The most honest, ballsy, don't give a shit person I've ever met, and she thought I would love her forever

Chris Hilton

#29. Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting.

George Saunders

#30. I haven't even read everything I wrote.

Karl Barth

#31. Although technical discussions are interesting to composers, I suspect that the truly magical and spiritual powers of music arise from deeper levels of our psyche.

George Crumb

#32. I frequently hear our present period described as uncertain, confused, chaotic.

George Crumb

#33. By reaching out, more comes back than you can possibly imagine.

Christopher Reeve

#34. The advent of electronically synthesized sound after World War II has unquestionably had enormous influence on music in general.

George Crumb

#35. The retrospective glance is a relatively easy gesture for us to make.

George Crumb

#36. Perhaps two million years ago the creatures of a planet in some remote galaxy faced a musical crisis similar to that which we earthly composers face today.

George Crumb

#37. In a broader sense, the rhythms of nature, large and small - the sounds of wind and water, the sounds of birds and insects - must inevitably find their analogues in music.

George Crumb