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One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

Igor Stravinsky

A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Cultural Familiar Unknown
We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Forget Music Sound
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 haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Feeling Life Music Myself Understand
All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Definite Music Point Succession
Good composers don’t borrow, they steal.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Borrow One Liner Steal
A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Architect Build Himself Home Invention Live
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
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Average Genius Steal
The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Commission Oneself Trick
What force is more potent than love?
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Force Love One Liner Strong
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
I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Criticism Day Dreams Music Painting Small
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alone Essence Love Success
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Beginning Eat Inspiration Work
The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

General Love Music Teaching Trouble
Revolution means turning the wheel.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

One Liner Revolution
The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Ability Creation Humble Note True Worth
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Knowledge Learning Life Mistake Pursuit Wisdom
I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Live Memories Myself True Wonder
The profound meaning of music’s essential aim, is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Essential Man Meaning Unity
I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Myself Sea Sick
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Difference Effort Listening
Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious one, which alone insures vitality and durability.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Alone Consciousness Music Order Perfection Regulation State
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Establishment Man Music Ourselves Purpose Time
Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Flow Music Order Structure Time
I am an inventor of music.
IGOR STRAVINSKY

Invention Music Myself

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

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One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

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Popular Authors

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