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A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

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

Drama Live Music Reading Relationship
I never understood the need for a “live” audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Audience Death Live Music Need Performance Understand
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

End Music Pieces Song
Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Possible Right Save Silence Wrong
We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Creation Invention Music Name
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Average Genius Steal
Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had a perfect knowledge.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Diamond Failure Knowledge Perfection World
The further one separates himself from the precepts of the Christian Church, the further one distances himself from the truth. Only God can create. I make music from music.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Creation Distance God Music Separate
One’s belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one’s conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren’t always right.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Belief Dangerous Oneself Right Sincere
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Freedom Oneself Perspective Restriction
Silence, which will save from shame, will also deprive me of fame.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Deep Fame Myself Risk Save Shame Silence
The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Comment Music Pieces True
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don’t like, it’s always by Villa Lobos?
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Artist Music Myself Pieces
We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed, and as we are already flying pilotless, on instrument controls, it is even too late to ask where we are going.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Clock Control Fly Instrument Journey Slow Time
An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Abstraction Audience Person Taste
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Difference Effort Listening

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

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A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

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