I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don’t succeed, I consider it my own fault.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICHI feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin’s orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.
More Dmitri Shostakovich Quotes
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What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn’t laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in “serious” music.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
He fell like a chicken into the soup.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin’s orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
Football is the ballet of the masses.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
The best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There’s more of a chance then that they’ll survive.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH -
In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH