Igor Stravinsky Quotes

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Igor Stravinsky

Profession : Composer

Birth : June 17, 1882

What force is more potent than love?

Igor Stravinsky

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?

Igor Stravinsky

The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

Igor Stravinsky

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Igor Stravinsky

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

Igor Stravinsky

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

Igor Stravinsky

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

Igor Stravinsky

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.

Igor Stravinsky

Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.

Igor Stravinsky

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

Igor Stravinsky

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

Igor Stravinsky

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

Igor Stravinsky

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

Igor Stravinsky

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

Igor Stravinsky

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Igor Stravinsky

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.

Igor Stravinsky

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

Igor Stravinsky

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.

Igor Stravinsky

My music is best understood by children and animals.

Igor Stravinsky

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

Igor Stravinsky