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If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.

Brian Eno

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.
BRIAN ENO

Ambition Art Painting
I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself, in a sense, in the mid 1960s really, when I first heard composers like Terry Riley, and when I first started playing with tape recorders.
BRIAN ENO

Compose Firsts Heard Ideas Tape
I hate the rock music tradition. I can’t bear it!
BRIAN ENO

Bears Hate Rocks
What happens with notation is that it reduces things to a language which isn’t necessarily appropriate to them. In the same way that words do, you get a much cruder version of what was actually intended.
BRIAN ENO

Appropriate Language Notation
For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.
BRIAN ENO

Afterward Firsts Lines Sound
The tools are evolving, and people’s interests are evolving as well. So, suddenly people like to hear bands, people like Devendra Banhart or the xx, bands that make a kind of virtue of sloppiness.
BRIAN ENO

Hands People Sloppiness
Everybody is entertained to death.
BRIAN ENO

Death Entertained Everybody
I think we’re about ready for a new feeling to enter music. I think that will come from the Arabic world.
BRIAN ENO

Feelings Thinking World
I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.
BRIAN ENO

Function Trouble Views
My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
BRIAN ENO

Peculiar Process Writing
People in the arts often want to aim for the biggest, most obvious target, and hit it smack in the bull’s eye.
BRIAN ENO

Arrows Art Eye Smack
Everything good proceeds from enthusiasm.
BRIAN ENO

Enthusiasm Everything Good
I often work by avoidance.
BRIAN ENO

Avoidance Often Work
Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‘Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this’ – have become commonplace in films and music too.
BRIAN ENO

Earth Editing Film Sentence
It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.
BRIAN ENO

Democracy Disappear Easy
Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while.
BRIAN ENO

Bugs Ears People

If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.

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If something is good, you must torture it mercilessly until it is either dead or great.

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