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If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Compose Hate Myself Thinking Worship
When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Believe Despair Himself Man
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

Comment History Important Music Myself Performance Writing
The majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Majority Music Symphony
Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Evil Goodness Music True
I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don’t succeed, I consider it my own fault.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Mistake Myself Possible Success Try Understand Wide
Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Business Happiness Ourselves Rejoice
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

Death Forever Kill Myself Order Starve Suffering
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

Childhood Compose Interest Reading
Those who have ears to hear, will hear.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Ability Ear Hear
The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Average Genius Reality Writing
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

Emotion Fight Human Laughter Lyric Music Sadness Tragedy
He fell like a chicken into the soup.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Chicken Fall Soup
Every piece of music is a form of personal expression for its creator. If a work doesn’t express the composers own personal point of view, his own ideas, then it doesn’t, in my opinion, even deserve to be born.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Born Creator Deserve Expression Form Music Personal Pieces Point
Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Leadership Music People Reality Revolution
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

Count Job Live Myself Natural Work

If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.

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If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.

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