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Dmitri Shostakovich QUOTES

Dmitri Shostakovich QUOTES

1 " When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich

2 " I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich

3 " Football is the ballet of the masses. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich

4 " Art destroys silence. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

5 " I do not wish to listen to people denouncing their parents. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

6 " When I hear about someone else's pain, I feel pain too. i feel pain for everything - for people and animals. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

7 " Most people are average, neither black nor white, but grey. A dirty shade of grey. To the best of my ability I tried to write about these people, about their completely average, commonplace dreams and hopes, and about their suspicious tendency towards murder. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich

8 " But I like listening to any music, including bad music. it's a professional disease, an addiction to notes. The brain finds sustenance in any combination of sounds. It works constantly, performing various composerly operations. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

9 " It makes you think the best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much must 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 , Testimony: The Memoirs

10 " The majority of my symphonies are tombstones "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

11 " Now I can't abide rudeness, even in so called great artists. Rudeness and cruelty are the qualities i hate most. Rudeness and cruelty are always connected, I feel. One example out of many is Stalin. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

12 " One must speak the truth about the past or not at all. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

13 " I can think of nothing more horrible than an orchestra that has gone out of control at rehearsal. I wouldn't wish it on an enemy. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

14 " Probably many people think that I came back to life after the Fifth Symphony. No. I came back to life after the Seventh. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

15 " In response to a plea in early 1941 from his colleague and friend, the writer Marietta Shaginyan, who was newly infatuated with the Piano Quintet and its creator, Mickhail Zoshchenko drafted for her a portrait of the Shostakovich he knew, a deeply complex individual:
"It seemed to you that he is “frail, fragile, withdrawn, an infinitely direct, pure child.” That is so. But if it were only so, then great art (as with him) would never be obtained. He is exactly what you say he is, plus something else — he is hard, acid, extremely intelligent, strong perhaps, despotic and not altogether good-natured (although cerebrally good-natured).

That is the combination in which he must be seen. And then it may be possible to understand his art to some degree.

In him, there are great contradictions. In him, one quality obliterates the other. It is conflict in the highest degree. It is almost a catastrophe."

Quoted in Laurel Fay: Shostakovich, a Life. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich

16 " Love us when we are dirty, not when we are clean. Anyone will love us when we’re clean. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich

17 " A fresh approach to a work of music (...) usually comes to those who have a fresh approach to aspects of life, to life in general. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich

18 " I'm training my left hand to write, in case I lose the ability in my right. That's gymnastics for the dying. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

19 " [on Prokofiev] And, by the way, he never did learn how to orchestrate properly. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs

20 " Badgering a colleague doesn't come from a fit of pique, it comes from an organic quality of the soul. And a mean soul will inevitably be reflected in music. Wagner is a convincing example of that, but far from the only one. "

― Dmitri Shostakovich , Testimony: The Memoirs