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

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

Count Job Live Myself Natural Work
A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Artist Creativity Previous Satisfaction Work
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

Attention Best Chance Hold Pay Survive Treat Yourself
If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Dedication Hands Music Myself Teeth
Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Compose Hate Myself Thinking Worship
In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Important Music Myself Run Word
Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Business Happiness Ourselves Rejoice
Football is the ballet of the masses.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Football Mass Sports
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
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
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 majority of my symphonies are tombstones.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Majority Music Symphony
What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Fragile Head Paper Vessel
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
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
I don’t know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel’s Bolero. Too bad – this is how I hear war.
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH

Brave Doubt Imitation Pieces War

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

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

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