classical music

* WISDOM TROVE *

1:Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. ~ kin-hubbard, @wisdomtrove

2:I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove

3:I write right off the typer. I call it my "machinegun." I hit it hard, usually late at night while drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio and smoking mangalore ganesh beedies. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove

4:I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove

5:There's no light at the end of the tunnel, there isn't even a tunnel. The best thing I can do is get drunk and listen to classical music. Or sleep and wait for death to get closer. Leaving this will not be a horrible thing. Yet I'm glad, somehow, that I threw my words in the air: confetti, celebrating nothing. ~ charles-bukowski, @wisdomtrove

6:The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind change. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. ~ hermann-hesse, @wisdomtrove

7:I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time. ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove

* NEWFULLDB 2.4M *

1:I was born out of classical music. ~ Mika,

2:I listen mostly to classical music. ~ Alexandra Fuller,

3:I love listening to classical music. ~ Katharine McPhee,

4:Jazz will be the classical music of the future. ~ Dizzy Gillespie,

5:I also like Western classical music and jazz. ~ Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,

6:I love classical music. It has left a major mark on my playing. ~ Slash,

7:I love gentle, gorgeous classical music such as Mozart. ~ Felicity Kendal,

8:I like to listen to classical music... I like mainline jazz. ~ Herb Alpert,

9:I was interested in both Western and Indian classical music. ~ Satyajit Ray,

10:I love Adele and Lykke Li. I also listen to classical music as well. ~ Birdy,

11:My influences are with Irish music, church music and classical music. ~ Enya,

12:Lately I've been listening to some classical music again, some jazz. ~ Alan Vega,

13:I listen to classical music at home probably more than pop music. ~ David Gilmour,

14:I'm a self-taught guitarist, but I have a classical music background. ~ Adam Jones,

15:Everybody loves classical music they just don't know about it yet. ~ Benjamin Zander,

16:The death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing tradition. ~ Charles Rosen,

17:Autumn is a classical music; when it begins, the gravity disappears! ~ Mehmet Murat ildan,

18:If classical music is the state of the art, then the arts are in a sad state. ~ Frank Zappa,

19:This is rock'n'roll, not classical music. It's about people working together. ~ Cass McCombs,

20:Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music. ~ Nina Simone,

21:upbeat classical music is piped in, and a video of guinea pig olympics begins. ~ J T Lawrence,

22:I listen to mostly-classical music, but mostly by radio - I'm not an audiophile. ~ Dennis Ritchie,

23:I love classical music and often listen to symphonies or opera in the morning. ~ William Mapother,

24:My family were all into classical music, and I found that very intimidating. ~ Elizabeth McGovern,

25:All music is beautiful and good, but classical music alone is food for the soul, ~ Georgia Le Carre,

26:Whenever I visit a city, I like to see what classical music concerts are on offer. ~ Park Chan wook,

27:When I was young, I thought classical music was only the background noise for cartoons. ~ Ben Carson,

28:I'm everything I'm made of. So a part of me is made of classical music. I'm grateful for it. ~ Ledisi,

29:I am not doing something that it is experimental music in relation to classical music. ~ Joanna Newsom,

30:I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano. ~ Gary Oldman,

31:Classical music is this music that was written by a bunch of dead people a long time ago. ~ Frank Zappa,

32:I had to listen to the classical music because it calms me down, calms my nerves down. ~ Novak Djokovic,

33:I love hip-hop; I love Sleigh Bells. I also love classical music and musical theater. ~ Tatiana Maslany,

34:As a rule, my focus is on classical music, but I love jazz. I love everything, actually. ~ Julie Andrews,

35:Jazz, for me, is a closed circuit, like the term baroque in the world of classical music. ~ Jan Garbarek,

36:Obviously classical music tends to be stuff that is usually at least a hundred years old. ~ Steve Hackett,

37:Classical music has been based on works people love and come back to for aural comfort. ~ Leila Josefowicz,

38:I listen to classical music very much. There's a lot of jazz that I don't enjoy listening to. ~ Lee Konitz,

39:I'm not really involved with politics... I'm living in my cocoon with my classical music around. ~ Eva Green,

40:Listening to classical music is a journey not a state; it's an activity not a meditation. ~ Armando Iannucci,

41:If you're alive, you have all the experience necessary to understand classical music. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

42:When I'm 40, too old to be a rock star, I plan to go back to college to study classical music. ~ Chris Martin,

43:When I was very young, I played in a punk-rock band, but I also studied music theory and classical music. ~ Moby,

44:What I do for migraines when I get them, I listen to classical music, and I turn it up really loud. ~ Ian McLagan,

45:I've been listening to quite a lot of classical music like Erik Satie, and quite a lot of blues. ~ Elizabeth Jagger,

46:What I wanted to do was music, until I was about 16. But it was jazz and rock, never classical music. ~ Simon Helberg,

47:I'm very flower-like. I love classical music. I go to ballet and I cry. There's nothing so beautiful. ~ Michael Gambon,

48:Another classical music teacher from Performing Arts that I've stayed in contact with is Jonathan Strasser. ~ Jon Gordon,

49:At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music. ~ Satyajit Ray,

50:Drink a cup of herbal tea, if you like. Listen to some soft classical music and prepare yourself to drift ~ Robin S Sharma,

51:I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff, I love classical music, and I needed a time-out. ~ Maurice Sendak,

52:I'm pretty optimistic about the future of rock... it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz. ~ Jimmy Page,

53:I used to like to set different film clips to classical music, not even my own songs, but make little movies. ~ Lana Del Rey,

54:I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together. ~ Charles Bukowski,

55:The Mozart Effect comes to mind: the popular idea that listening to classical music makes students better at math. ~ John Medina,

56:Thank God for movie music. It preserves the rich vocabulary in classical music through challenging times. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

57:To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. ~ Nina Simone,

58:We don't want to limit ourselves to any specific sound like that was before when we were brought up in classical music. ~ Ralf Hutter,

59:Classical music should play in every train station and every airport, damn it. Every departure needs a soundtrack. ~ Zachary Karabashliev,

60:I love classical music; I love the way it's worked... all those chord sequences so I often use that sort of effect in my solos. ~ Jon Lord,

61:It's not that people don't like classical music. It's that they don't have the chance to understand and to experience it. ~ Gustavo Dudamel,

62:I was fairly poor
but most of my money went
for wine and
classical music.
I loved to mix the two
together. ~ Charles Bukowski,

63:[Phil Wood] knew about wine. He knew about food. He knew about art. He knew about classical music. He was interested in things. ~ Jon Gordon,

64:English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets. ~ Yann Martel,

65:Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly. But the truth is, I'm more likely to listen to rock music. ~ Tony Blair,

66:I started off with classical music, and I got into jazz when I was about 14 years old. And I've been playing jazz ever since. ~ Herbie Hancock,

67:At a certain point, I became a kind of musician that has tunnel vision about jazz. I only listened to jazz and classical music. ~ Herbie Hancock,

68:Sometimes I'll listen to a little old Van Halen, or some Beatles, Zeppelin stuff, classical music... I like a lot of different things. ~ Eric Carr,

69:I love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that, whether it's Indian or it's Western. ~ A R Rahman,

70:Maybe I'm genetically more inclined to music - but the music I make is so far removed from Indian classical music. I grew up in Texas! ~ Norah Jones,

71:Hip-hop has a feeling element, it's not just about knowing music. It's not like classical music or jazz where you can go on raw energy. ~ Robert Greene,

72:On horseback you feel as if you're moving in time to classical music; a camel seems to progress to the beat of a drum played by a drunk. ~ Walter Moers,

73:When I was younger, studying classical music, I really had to put in the time. Three hours a day is not even nice - you have to put in six. ~ Alicia Keys,

74:Our audience, it has been a more difficult process for classical music audiences around the world, and I'm not completely certain why. ~ Esa Pekka Salonen,

75:Sometimes in the great soundtrack of our lives there are no words, there are only emotions; I believe this is why God gave us classical music. ~ Anonymous,

76:Classical music in Venezuela is now something like a pop concert. You can see people screaming or crying because they don't have a ticket. ~ Gustavo Dudamel,

77:I started making music with my band in the 80s, so I am more product of post punk than classical music, and I have always carried on this way. ~ Yann Tiersen,

78:I learned the cello , but I would still need a massive amount of practice. But I do play classical music, so I understand where that comes from. ~ Alicia Keys,

79:Most people don't listen to classical music at all, but to rock-and-roll or hillbilly songs or some album named Music To Listen To Music By. ~ Randall Jarrell,

80:The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking. ~ Esa Pekka Salonen,

81:Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it becomes your friend for life. ~ Yo Yo Ma,

82:Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it. ~ John Corigliano,

83:Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

84:Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child. ~ Ian Anderson,

85:I have discovered three things which know no geographical borders - classical music, American jazz, and applause as the sign of the public's favor. ~ Jascha Heifetz,

86:I was not born into the world of the stuntman and the daredevil; I was born into the world of theater and writing and sculpting and classical music. ~ Philippe Petit,

87:Life, like classical music, is full of difficult passages that are conquered as much through endurance and determination as through any particular skill. ~ Sheri Dew,

88:I had a big background in listening to classical music and I started trying to compose, like I was playing the guitar but I heard an orchestra in my head. ~ John Fahey,

89:I'm sure there are a few things in my CD collection that might surprise people. I like classical music, the blues, and I'm a big fan of alternative rock. ~ Brad Paisley,

90:Growing up with country, R&B, gospel, and classical music from my grandmother and pop, Tuskegee was the perfect melting pot for my influences as a writer. ~ Lionel Richie,

91:I have no doubt that there are great people about though... the thing of it is, nothing to this day moves me like classical music (Debussy, Vaughn Williams). ~ Gary Lucas,

92:It [piano lessons] wasn't a priority, but it was an interest and through that I became acquainted with classical music, which was a main interest at the time. ~ Paul Smith,

93:I've worked with some great orchestras and amazing classical musicians, but I don't like the conceptualization of classical music as an elitist form of art. ~ Serj Tankian,

94:Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music. ~ Sonny Rollins,

95:I got involved with classical music when I was in high school and it's followed me throughout my entire life and probably had a profound effect on my life. ~ Benjamin Carson,

96:It was kind of sort of the heavens opened up and I realized that Bach, at least, you know - out of all the classical music - needs to be a big part of my life. ~ Chris Thile,

97:There was the noise itself, which he thought of vaguely as the noise of classical music, sameish and rhetorical, full of feelings people surely never had ~ Alan Hollinghurst,

98:Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world. ~ Yo Yo Ma,

99:I had spent many years pursuing excellence, because that is what classical music is all about... Now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important. ~ Nina Simone,

100:Classical music is not really my thing, and I know absolutely nothing about it. If you told me you saw Brendel play Brahms last night, I would ask you who won. ~ David Rosenfelt,

101:I definitely want to act, but I also want to score movies, and I have this idea to fuse classical music with other styles that would give it a different perception. ~ Alicia Keys,

102:The classical music industry, has been an industry of covers. So we do covers, and if I compare this with the rock and pop side, what is the most exciting event? ~ Esa Pekka Salonen,

103:I got so much love for classical music and I hear so much incredible music.You should know a bunch of music and have respect for all sorts of genres and styles of music. ~ Bruno Mars,

104:Many fail to realize this great recording industry was built by so-called jazz artists. And at the other end of the spectrum, a base in European classical music as well. ~ Ahmad Jamal,

105:But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

106:There's a certain standard in classical music that allows the application of the term "genius," but you're treading on thin ice if you start applying it to rock & rollers. ~ Jimmy Page,

107:I loved 'Fantasia' as a kid because it filled me with wonder, enchantment and awe. It was my first real introduction into classical music. It was totally inspiring to me. ~ Nicolas Cage,

108:I grew up with classical music blasting in my parents' living room and my older brother's practicing saxophone in his room listening to jazz... a beautiful chaos. ~ Josephine de La Baume,

109:I don't know if it's a sign of all the chaos that is happening out there or not, but I've lately craved the structure and order of classical music, the balance and symmetry. ~ Helen Reddy,

110:I've never approached classical music in a formal way, ever. I couldn't read very well. I'd have to play every piece and internalize it, almost as if I had written it myself. ~ Andrew Bird,

111:Classical music is far from boring - it has all the blood, energy, the sinister dark side, rhythm that rock music has, and all the refined, subtle sensuality that one can ask for ~ Yuja Wang,

112:Seriously though, my father was the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera so I grew up with classical music and jazz in the home all the time. ~ Bobby McFerrin,

113:What is classical music if not the epitome of sensuality, passion, and understated erotica that popular music, even with all of its energy and life, cannot even begin to touch? ~ Lara St John,

114:I had a lot of classical influences. I had classical music and opera and literature, but I also liked sleaze. And putting it together, sleaze and glamour, it just made sense to me. ~ Rick Owens,

115:Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast. ~ Michael Caine,

116:Classical music fulfills for me the function of narrative. I spend 90 minutes a day listening to symphonic music - Beethoven to Bartók - some chamber pieces, and that's my enrichment. ~ James Ellroy,

117:I think classical music tuition is, well, was when I was a child, was an abomination. I think in some ways it is one of life's great tragedies for everybody who gives up an instrument. ~ Hugh Laurie,

118:Although I enjoyed writing Film Music it was always a means to an end, in that it enabled me to keep a wife and family and write my classical music, which has always been my passion. ~ Malcolm Arnold,

119:I got my interest in Lotte Lenya and the Brecht-Weill canon from my parents. And I love classical music - I got that from my parents. I love Cole Porter - that I got from my dad. ~ Marianne Faithfull,

120:I'm not interested in popular culture. I hate Quentin Tarantino. I rarely go to movies. I hate rock 'n' roll. I work. I think. I listen to classical music. I brood. I like sports cars. ~ James Ellroy,

121:Classical music gradually lost popularity because it is too complicated: you need twenty-five or thirty skilled musicians just to hum it properly. So people began to develop regular music. ~ Dave Barry,

122:He didn’t care for light classical music. If you were going to have classical shit, you ought to go whole hog and have your Beethoven or your Wagner or someone like that. Why fuck around? ~ Stephen King,

123:It's America's classical music ... this becomes our tradition ... the bottom line of any country in the world is what did we contribute to the world? ... we contributed Louis Armstrong ~ Louis Armstrong,

124:I grew up with classical music when I was a ballet dancer. Now when I have to prepare an emotional scene, to cry or whatever, I listen to sonatas. Vivaldi and stuff. It's just beautiful to me. ~ Diane Kruger,

125:Jazz goes into folk music, into rock music. Jazz is in practically everything except classical music where they're reading the same music all the time, the same way, the same tempo every night. ~ Van Morrison,

126:I write right off the typer. I call it my "machinegun." I hit it hard, usually late at night while drinking wine and listening to classical music on the radio and smoking mangalore ganesh beedies. ~ Charles Bukowski,

127:There's so many different styles and facets of the 360-degree musical sphere to listen to. From tribal to classical music, it's all there. If the bottom was to sag out of that, for God's sake, help us all. ~ Jimmy Page,

128:Classical music is an unbroken, living tradition that goes back over 1,000 years, and every one of those years has had something unique and powerful to say to us about what it's like to be alive. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

129:I'd studied piano first and switched over to cello when I was about seven. I played mostly chamber and solo classical music. I got really involved with rock music when I was a teenager. I wired up my cello. ~ Tod Machover,

130:I learned some classical music history, which I had done quite a bit at of Performing Arts. But I got some more with a great teacher named David Noon, who I've been in contact with quite a bit in recent years. ~ Jon Gordon,

131:The classical music scene was completely unfamiliar to me. A lot of people think of older generations and stuffiness. But it's not. You listen to the Overture of 1812, and you can hear a rock n' roll catharsis. ~ Lola Kirke,

132:One of the problems that we face through the media attention that these artists receive is that there has been an awful lot of talk about opera and classical music being elite and being for an elitist group. ~ Lesley Garrett,

133:It is classical music, and is considered the best and most puzzling ever manufactured. You're supposed to like it, whether you do or not, and if you don't, the proper thing is to look as if you did. Understand? ~ L Frank Baum,

134:Part of my big message with all this is that if you are alive, you know all you need to know about the message of classical music, because more than any other music, it is about the way life really is. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

135:The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played. ~ Andre Previn,

136:the next day he was formally charged with ‘breaking ranks while in formation, felonious assault, indiscriminate behavior, mopery, high treason, provoking, being a smart guy, listening to classical music and so on’. ~ Anonymous,

137:I loved Queen, Journey, Fleetwood Mac, and people like Barbara Streisand. The thing with me is that classical music was also an inspiration. I took piano lessons at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels for 10 years. ~ Lara Fabian,

138:I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly. ~ Elton John,

139:As far as I was concerned the important thing was that the music was getting the attention as well as me so it was always a great way to get more of the public to connect with classical music, and opera particularly. ~ Lesley Garrett,

140:I can think and play stuff in classical music that possibly violinists who didn't have access to other types of music could never do. It means I'm more flexible within classical music, to be a servant to the composer. ~ Nigel Kennedy,

141:I started when I was really young. I was playing classical music when I was 4 and when I turned 11 I started to write pop music. I guess you could say it was my intellectual evolution and my love of music began to change. ~ Lady Gaga,

142:Jazz isn't like pop, where you sell millions of records with a hit. Your spirit and soul aren't important in pop music. But jazz is like classical music. If people like you, they'll remember you and you'll last forever. ~ Freddie Hubbard,

143:Kurt Weill is in no way classical music,” corrected Dad. “You can say he wrote operas, music for the stage, or modern music. But you cannot say he wrote classical music any more than you can say he wrote West Texas Swing. ~ James W Ziskin,

144:Growing up in a family that listened to almost nothing but classical music had its effects, as well. "California Über Alles," the first Dead Kennedys single, was inspired musically more by Japanese Kabuki than anything else. ~ Jello Biafra,

145:Both parents were very encouraging - especially my father. My father thought the sun rose and set with me. Neither one had a musical background or any musical talent. They liked classical music, but neither could carry a tune. ~ Gordon Getty,

146:You don't need any specialized education and you don't need to know anything about the world in which I work. I think my music should be able to speak to you even if you've never been to a concert of classical music before. ~ Jennifer Higdon,

147:Any material can be treated in any number of ways. Sometimes I might hear something, or someone else might hear something, and say, "Wow, that sounds like classical music." Somebody else might think it sounds like a slow jam. ~ John Dieterich,

148:Violin for me is a great instrument because you can use it as a rhythmical instrument and also as a melodic instrument. ... You can pretty much do everything with the violin. Sometimes I feel classical music limits the violin. ~ David Garrett,

149:Rock and roll was my favorite, but before long I grew to enjoy Shinamoto's brand of classical music. This was music from another world, which had its appeal, but more than that I loved it because she was a part of that world. ~ Haruki Murakami,

150:I guess some people in classical music can keep going until they kick (die) and the (Rolling) Stones are definitely pushing the envelope but I wonder if here's a time when you have to face whether you are as good as you used to be. ~ Billy Joel,

151:I had great inspiration from a Japanese composer named Toru Takemitsu. He wrote over 90 film scores and a lot of concert music, a lot of classical music, and he gave me a lot of inspiration, as well as composers from other countries. ~ Howard Shore,

152:I think one of the reasons it ended was that his eyes never lit up for me the way they did for classical music. I realize that in the long run I may not be as wonderful as a Brahms symphony but I think I’m good for a Haydn quintet. ~ Daniel Handler,

153:Do you think if two people liked the same thing, it could bring them closer together?"
"Certainly... Take classical music, for instance... Two people who shared a love for Beethoven could become very close..."
"How about TV? ~ Charles M Schulz,

154:A lot of people may not know how competitive it is to play classical music, because when you think about it, the music that you're playing is music that's been here for years. And all you're trying to do is improve upon it when you play. ~ Jamie Foxx,

155:It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line ~ Duke Ellington,

156:Part of my mission is simply that: to bring the world of the arts, particularly classical music, closer to people so they don't feel that it is something remote that they have to specially prepare themselves for, or dress up for. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

157:Obviously there are pieces of classical music that are some of the most beautiful music ever written, for me anyway is a lot of classical or contemporary music, so it's a different kind of space that you enter when you're listening to it. ~ Bryce Dessner,

158:And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage. And I think that's something that we as classical musicians have underestimated. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

159:Since I've grown up I really wanted to be able to create something different. In Persian music, opposite, again, to classical music, that the instrument developed and evolved over, like, hundreds of years, our instrument all remained the same. ~ Hafez Nazeri,

160:With a piece of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven, on first listening I'm referencing it with other pieces by them that I know. I think that most people do this - they listen to pieces through the filter of pieces they already know. ~ Paul Lansky,

161:Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence. ~ Dave Brubeck,

162:In a way, the history of jazz's development is a small mirror of classical music's development through the centuries. Now jazz is a living form of original music, while classical music has gotten to the end of its cycle in terms of exploring its form. ~ Mike Figgis,

163:I remember being in college and taking a class on classical music and getting a big laugh when I said very sincerely that I was not really into trained voices. Some of the greatest singers can transcend their technical perfection and still sound great. ~ Ira Kaplan,

164:Einstein was articulate and well-read, a lover of classical music, and it was he who said, "I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world ~ Azar Nafisi,

165:I play only classical music. My pianos are my only big indulgence, but they're a necessity. When I'm playing the piano is literally the only time I can be completely abstract and disconnected from the regular world and yet be connected - to my music. ~ Rafael Vinoly,

166:I enjoy listening to classical music and heavy metal. I play basketball and try to go diving at least once a year. I don't really have hobbies in the traditional sense... I engage in too many activities already through the actions of my characters. ~ Alan Dean Foster,

167:As Duke Ellington once said, “There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind.” In that sense, jazz and classical music are fundamentally the same. The pure joy one experiences listening to “good” music transcends questions of genre. ~ Haruki Murakami,

168:A love of classical music is only partially a natural response to hearing the works performed, it also must come about by a decision to listen carefully, to pay close attention, a decision inevitably motivated by the cultural and social prestige of the art. ~ Charles Rosen,

169:I am best served in my life’s goals if I lay in the dark, brood, sleep, listen to classical music, spend time with my few friends, and chase women. That’s what I do. I chase women. I spend time with my few friends. I brood. I sleep. I earn money, and I work. ~ James Ellroy,

170:The musical instuments may be western but my voice never wavers away from my own ragas. it is good to make experiments and I do a lot of them but my thoughts always round the centre and that centre is the tradition of my elders and it is classical music... ~ Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,

171:Although in society in general, the idea of an Irish composer of 'classical music', or whatever you want to call it, is still a strange item, generally speaking. Even in the arts, among our fellow creative artists in other disciplines, you still feel slightly out of it. ~ John Kinsella,

172:My whole childhood was filled with classical music and going to concerts of the New York Philharmonic and other New York ensembles and organizations, but interestingly, I didn't become conscious of wanting to be a musician until I was about 11. I was a rather late starter. ~ Gunther Schuller,

173:The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted. ~ Yo Yo Ma,

174:We Gonna Win' is a song of triumph, It represents my personal belief that with hard work, talent and dedication, everything is possible. It's a one of a kind marriage between rap and classical music, where the music doesn't accompany the vocalist, but rather stands on its own. ~ Miri Ben Ari,

175:Your mother is probably right," Dad said. "Social services frowns on drunk ten-year-ols. Besides, when I dropped my drumsticks and puked onstage, it was punk. If you drop your bow and smell like a brewery, it will look gauche. You classical-music people are so snobby that way. ~ Gayle Forman,

176:I don't mind being classified as a jazz artist, but I do mind being restricted to being a jazz artist. My foundation has been in jazz, though I didn't really start out that way. I started in classical music, but my formative years were in jazz, and it makes a great foundation. ~ Herbie Hancock,

177:Before college, I acted in my room, to classical music, because music tells stories. I'd put on a record and proceed, silently. I'd keep putting the needle back to a certain segment because I hadn't died well enough. I had to really, really feel dead. I'd love to do a death scene. ~ Amanda Plummer,

178:It's something he used to say when he was happy. It could be a very, very simple day. We might be sitting out on the front lawn. Dad loved classical music and we might be listening to some Stravinsky or something and having some tea and eggs. And he'd say, 'Oh, good stuff, isn't it?' ~ Jennifer Grant,

179:Marijuana is a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural aesthetic perceptions. I apprehended the structure of certain pieces of jazz and classical music in a new manner under the influence of marijuana, and these apprehensions have remained valid in years of normal consciousness. ~ Allen Ginsberg,

180:You know, the PTA president who cooks organic, well-balanced meals while reading to her kids in Latin about the importance of helping others, then escorts them to the art museum in the hybrid that plays classical music and mists lavender aromatherapy through the air-conditioning vents. ~ Daniel J Siegel,

181:I wanted to make an album where every song is kind of interacting - where you can't tell what's the string arrangement and what's the song. I guess that came out of going to college, majoring in music, studying classical music, and even as a kid, being really drawn to classical music. ~ Rostam Batmanglij,

182:My father did not bother that I play not a classical music. He always congratulated me for my development in music, I mean in any music but, he hang on to continue training at the Academy of Music... however, I never mentioned to my teachers that I trained myself at weekends in clubs. ~ Richard Clayderman,

183:My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different countries like India and China. I think that would be a shame not to take advantage and do something... not unique, because I don't have this pretension. ~ Rokia Traore,

184:Behind him she moved and a moment later Debussy filled the apartment, too light and pretty for Larry’s taste. He didn’t care for light classical music. If you were going to have classical shit, you ought to go whole hog and have your Beethoven or your Wagner or someone like that. Why fuck around? ~ Stephen King,

185:I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music. ~ Elie Wiesel,

186:In the background, classical music plays from a paint-splattered radio, the New York station with the ancient announcer more frequently heard in doctors’ waiting rooms and other places where signs prohibit the use of cell phones – the last bastions of Beethoven or Chopin or, on racier days, Shostakovich. ~ Kate Walbert,

187:With regard to creative artists, Baker also has some suggestions that seem sensible to me. Namely, they should be publicly funded.9That’s basically what happens with, say, classical music or opera. If you could extend that, you wouldn’t need intellectual property rights and the piracy issue would disappear. ~ Anonymous,

188:Music was literally in the air at the time, the Vienna of 1780. Everybody played music, classical music. There were in fact so many musicians that in apartment buildings people had to come up with a schedule - you practice at 5 p.m., I'll practice at 6 p.m. That way the music didn't collide with one another. ~ Eric Weiner,

189:There is this tremendous amount of arrogance and hubris, where somebody can look at something for five minutes and dismiss it. Whether you talk about gaming or 20th century classical music, you can't do it in five minutes. You can't listen to 'The Rite of Spring' once and understand what Stravinsky was all about. ~ Penn Jillette,

190:There's no light at the end of the tunnel, there isn't even a tunnel. The best thing I can do is get drunk and listen to classical music. Or sleep and wait for death to get closer. Leaving this will not be a horrible thing. Yet I'm glad, somehow, that I threw my words in the air: confetti, celebrating nothing. ~ Charles Bukowski,

191:Pop music, which I deeply admire and wish I could play better than I can, is based on expressing one mood, one feeling at a time. Classical music is by its very nature involved with different kinds of music, constantly transforming one another, which is more akin to the way our experience of life really is. ~ Michael Tilson Thomas,

192:I've got a lot of things that are probably obvious, not much outside the box right now. But, I have been listening to a lot of classical music lately for some reason. I used to do that a lot when I was doing cabinet making in New England. I've sort of returned to that for some reason. That might be surprising to people. ~ Hal Ketchum,

193:A lot of my colleagues just don't really realize that they have to work in order to get the interest of an audience, especially with young kids, especially because it [classical music] is not that popular. You don't see it on TV, you don't hear it on radio, so you really gotta put an effort into promoting classical music. ~ David Garrett,

194:I feel that classical music should be a more recognizable part of everyone’s entertainment. It has been my hope that through live concerts, motion pictures, recordings, international competitions, and interesting public forums, a larger group of people will learn to love classical music and attend live concert performances. ~ Jose Iturbi,

195:When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands. ~ Moby,

196:"Poetry" refers to the quite challenging and quite resistant sets of words put together to be admired and interpreted by people who are already into that sort of thing, somewhat analogous to free jazz or academic classical music. Which is stuff that I really like, but is late modernist and is going to have a limited audience. ~ Stephen Burt,

197:I understand that in people's eyes, classical music is kind of a lost and dying art, but in my eyes, it's like, "Oh, the musical language, which has been, in the past, only available to a scarce few at the top of the tower, is now wide open." Now people's ears are becoming more amenable to fake strings - I think this is great! ~ Owen Pallett,

198:The whole thing of singing on my own has been accidental and random. I sang a huge amount as a kid, and I was a boy soprano. I didn't do that much classical music; I did a little bit. I had a lovely voice. And then when my voice dropped, I didn't worry about it consciously because I wasn't that invested in my singing at the time. ~ Sam Amidon,

199:I've always been a lover of classical music ever since I was an early teenager I suppose. I remember the very first piece of classical music that grabbed me was I bought an LP of Daniel Barenboim performing Mozart's piano concertos and I would have been about 14 or 15 at the time and I remember I played it over and over again. ~ George Brandis,

200:I only knew classical music, which to me was the only true music. The only way I could survive at the bar was to mix the classical music with popular songs, and that meant I had to sing. What happened was that I discovered I had a voice plus the talent to mix classical music together with more popular songs, which at the time I detested. ~ Nina Simone,

201:The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. ~ Hermann Hesse,

202:The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind change. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. ~ Hermann Hesse,

203:My father was able to play a number of musical instruments and I fell in love with classical music in my teens and I allowed it to influence me. I like to think I took and still do from classical music and various techniques, I have made classical albums and recorded seven different pieces of Bach on different albums and its all music too me. ~ Steve Hackett,

204:On one hand you have a string quartet, which is not a symphony. On the other hand is you have me sampling them and making it sound like there is many more people playing, so the whole notion of, kind of, sampling applied to classical music is very intriguing to me because composers throughout history have borrowed motifs and quotes from one another. ~ DJ Spooky,

205:I couldn't listen to music with lyrics for the first few months after the brain surgery, because they were too complex and disturbing. So I listened to a lot of classical music. I didn't really want to read, either, so I listened to books on tape or watched movies. I also re-taught myself all of my childhood piano pieces. It helped me repair my brain. ~ Rosanne Cash,

206:In his entirely personal experience of them, English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was from the streets. Which is to stay, stab his heart and it would bleed French, slice his brain open and its convolutions would be lined with English and German, and touch his hands and they would feel Spanish. ~ Yann Martel,

207:There's an expression in classical music. It goes, 'We went out to the meadow.' It's for those evenings that can only be described in that way: There were no walls, there were no music stands, there weren't even any instruments. There was no ceiling, there was no floor, we all went out to the meadow. It describes a feeling.
(Tom Waits quote)
pg 208 ~ John Green,

208:There were a lot of illegal, deadly things stored in Beckett’s car, but the only thing he kept hidden was the CD he now pulled out from under the driver’s seat. He slipped it in the player and turned on the power, letting the classical music sweep over him like a cool breeze. It was the soundtrack of his boys. The music that saved them. Blake’s music. ~ Debra Anastasia,

209:A culture that gave the world the spiritual creations of the Classical Music of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert, the paintings of Michelangelo, and Raphael, Da Vinci and Rembrandt, does not need lessons from societies whose idea of spirituality is a heaven peopled with female virgins for the use of men, whose idea of heaven resembles a cosmic brothel. ~ Ibn Warraq,

210:If a musician wants to blossom into a full-fledged person, it's not enough if he knows only classical music; nor it is enough if he's well-versed only in raagas and techniques. Instead, he should be a knowledgeable person interested in life and philosophy. In his personal life there should be, atleast in some corner of his heart, a tinge of lingering sorrow. ~ A R Rahman,

211:I've making videos since I was seventeen I was originally discollecting vintage hmmm... footages from different archives and setting moving pictures to classical music clips that meant a lot to me. Maybe there were places I have been where nice things have happened. I had a vision of making my life a work of art and I was looking for people who also felt that way. ~ Lana Del Rey,

212:Why do you want to listen to classical music while doing yoga? If the answers are “because I want to relax before bed,” and “I want to do yoga to lose weight,” ask yourself why you want to relax and why you want to lose weight. Maybe your answers will be “I don’t want to be tired when I go to work the next day,” and “I want to lose weight so that I can be more svelte. ~ Marie Kond,

213:My father is doing a radio program - classical music. He has a beautiful speaking voice and that's his passion in life, his music. My mother lives in Melbourne and is an avid photographer. She's also started writing for a magazine out there and she submits poems, very funny ones, and articles. In some way or other, my family is always doing something with the media. ~ Olivia Newton John,

214:Being a classical musician I'm fascinated with how my colleagues, not just singers, but every musician finds ways to express something else or something new or the same ol', same ol' in classical music. I'm always in dialogue with other musicians at least orally, if I can't be with them and a lot of dead musicians as well. I've learned a lot from dead people on recordings. ~ Thomas Hampson,

215:I have never heard enough classical music to be able to enjoy it; & the simple truth is, I detest it. Not mildly, but will all my heart. To me an opera is the very climax & cap-stone of the absurd, the fantastic the unjustifiable. I hate the very name of opera - partly because of the nights of suffering I have endured in its presence, & partly because I want to love it and can't. ~ Mark Twain,

216:Markets are not just about the steam engine, iron foundries, or today’s silicon-chip factories. Markets also supported Shakespeare, Haydn, and the modern book superstore. The rise of oil painting, classical music, and print culture were all part of the same broad social and economic developments, namely the rise of capitalism, modern technology, rule of law, and consumer society. ~ Tyler Cowen,

217:I have a piano in my living room that I mess around on a little bit and when I asked Len if I could find a piece of music, I went through a **** load of classical music to find something that I felt had a certain urgency to it, but also with a hint of melancholia and maybe a sense of longing. I found that which is public domain and I had a piano teacher to go through it with me. ~ Colin Farrell,

218:I am very attracted to the United States. Why? Well, as a little kid from Southern Italy, not from a wealthy family, it was always my dream to go to the Big Apple. I'm not one to listen to classical music. I am very much for what is American, but I also prefer the America of the ghetto. I love the Bronx. I love hip-hop and R&B. I love electro-Latino, Latin music, that whole realm. ~ Riccardo Tisci,

219:I started piano lessons at age six but didn't take music seriously until I was a teenager, when I thought about a career in music. I studied classical music, and my instruments were guitar and piano. I played keyboards in bands, and after high school I went to Vienna to study at the Academy of Music. I also became a session player, which culminated in my work with Tangerine Dream. ~ Paul Haslinger,

220:We live today in a world where most of the really important developments in everything from math and physics and astronomy to public policy and psychology and classical music are so extremely abstract and technically complex and context-dependent that it's next to impossible for the ordinary citizen to feel that they (the developments) have much relevance to her actual life. ~ David Foster Wallace,

221:The lights are dim and a stereo plays classical music. Khoruts makes conversation to gauge the sedative’s effects. He’s listening for a quieting of the voice, a slowing of words. “Do you have any pets?” The room is quiet for a moment. “. . . pets.” “I think we’re ready to go.” A nurse brings the bowl with the vials. I ask her if the red color of the caps on the vials signifies biohazard. ~ Anonymous,

222:way the world of classical music picks its future virtuosos, or the way the world of ballet picks its future ballerinas, or the way our elite educational system picks its future scientists and intellectuals. You can’t buy your way into Major Junior A hockey. It doesn’t matter who your father or mother is, or who your grandfather was, or what business your family is in. Nor does it matter ~ Malcolm Gladwell,

223:I love Gustavo Dudamel and I love what he does for classical music, and I love what he comes out of, El Sistema and the old man Abreu. When we were in Venezuela, I had the chance to go to his building. He had, like, five or six orchestras playing of kids from the hood playing, like, Mahler's third symphony and Shostakovich fifth and Beethoven. Man, it's unbelievable. I mean, they could play. ~ Wynton Marsalis,

224:Fact is that I played piano and performed, as a young kid, a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Don't forget I was only eleven-years-old and to be on the stage at that age had tremendous impact on me. Basically love for classical music and performing as a kid on the big stage probably led toward this decision, which meant that music is going to be my big love but also my profession. ~ Herbie Hancock,

225:The way you hold the bow, the way that violinists are trained to produce a note, is really different. I'm not an expert in classical music. I don't want to say something that ends up in print and somebody comes running after me with a shovel, but they're taught for each note to stand alone in a very deliberate kind of way, which is really different than how notes are strung together in old-time music to create rhythm. ~ Bruce Molsky,

226:I've been extremely lucky to work with Elmer Bernstein, Howard Shore over the years, but I've always imagined films with my own scores, because I don't come from that world or that period of filmmaking. And so how could I make up my own score on a film like this where it isn't necessarily made up of popular music from the radio or the period; it isn't necessarily classical music. But what if it's modern symphonic music? ~ Martin Scorsese,

227:I'm often surprised by classical music and musicians. I've met a large number of them because my wife works for the Boston Symphony, and I'm in that world a lot now. I'm surprised at how difficult it is for people who are classically trained to read music or to memorize music, how difficult it is for them to improvise, to just go off and play. It's sort of, it's like terra incognita. They just, (makes noise) they don't get it. ~ James Taylor,

228:I basically love classical music. I love a lot of musicians playing together and the whole culture of that whether it's Indian or it's Western. But in India, I think it's limited to filler music unfortunately. That's one thing I want to push in India where we have the infrastructure of an orchestra where you play Indian melodies with an orchestra and something different for a universal audience. It requires a lot of work from me. ~ A R Rahman,

229:Because I was a chemistry student and was never supposed to be a musician, I always felt like I was an outsider looking at music going "Why is this interesting to me? Why should I be doing this?" and I never felt like I was a natural musician. It came into my life, kind of, as a conceptual problem and I think all my pieces are, in a way, looking at some issue and sometimes veering toward an inside baseball model of classical music. ~ David Lang,

230:We, however, have all kinds of different ideas about what happiness is. Some must go bungee jumping to experience a rush of joy, while others find bliss staying home. Some are happy in a concert hall, listening to classical music, while children on a playground could be music to the ears of others. Some people experience elation when they solve a complicated equation, while for others a cancelled math class is a happy childhood memory. ~ Haim Shapira,

231:I wouldn't know anything about opera music if it wasn't for Bugs Bunny. That was my entire introduction to opera music. I wouldn't know anything about classical music if it wasn't for "Fantasia." They didn't have to do that stuff. They chose to base this ridiculous, funny, intriguing, creative story on this beautiful classical music. It's the combination of the high and the low that I thought was very cool. But I had no concept of it as a kid. ~ Jon Hamm,

232:Yeah, unfortunately [ films like Miss Julie are a dying breed]. And that is sad, because we need these. Like we need books, we need classical music, we need ballet, we need opera, to remind us really of who we are and why we are, and we need in movie houses - even to be in a movie - where you sit and see not only excitement and man-hero, woman-hero, you need quietly, just like that Hawking movie we talked about, to know how people overcome. ~ Liv Ullmann,

233:I write my music with the idea that it will appeal to all of those people, and I want them to go in with all the history that's within all of us - all the things that they've listened to in the backs of their minds, whether it's country music or minimal techno, or classical music or whatever. I want them to bring that excitement, that love, or that hate, or whatever it might be, to my music. I feel that my music draws on so many different things. ~ Missy Mazzoli,

234:That’s what happens when you study men: you find mare’s nests. I happen to believe that you can’t study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to make the lower orders govern the country and listen to classical music, which is balderdash. You also want to take away from them everything which makes life worth living and not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors. ~ C S Lewis,

235:As far as piano players are concerned, Oscar Peterson is my very favorite. I also like McCoy Tyner. I think that the big jazz stars, both now and in the past...how shall I say it? These guys are as great as Bach, Beethoven; all of them. People don't know it yet. If jazz survives and is put on a pedestal as an art form, the same as classical music has been through the years, a hundred years from now the kids will know who they were, with that kind of respect. ~ Nina Simone,

236:You never know that this is the moment when you're in the moment. When I was sixteen I moved to a smaller town in Vermont, and at that time I didn't have a band to play in. So I was forced to play in Top 40 bands and fraternity bands and wedding bands. That was all pop music, but I was listening to Weather Report and classical music. Then I went to Berklee College of Music in 1978, and you had Victor Bailey there, and Steve Vai. And suddenly I was among my ilk. ~ Stuart Hamm,

237:I hate Christmas. Everything is designed for families, romance, warmth, emotion and presents, and if you have no boyfriend, no money, your mother is going out with a missing Portuguese criminal and your friends don't want to be your friend anymore, it makes you want to emigrate to a vicious Muslim regime, where at least all the women are treated like social outcasts. Anyway, I don't care. I am going to quietly read a book all weekend and listen to classical music. ~ Helen Fielding,

238:You would be surprised how many people that are very passionate about classical music are deeply involved in Hip Hop. You would think Jazz would be the natural associative, but it's extraordinary what kind of crossed-genre associations we are finding in digital media. And even as I'm talking about it, I find myself speaking very much more about how people are accessing that which, what I do, rather than me being preoccupied trying to market something that I do to them. ~ Thomas Hampson,

239:I hate Christmas. Everything is designed for families, romance, warmth, emotion and presents, and if you have no boyfriend, no money, your mother is going out with a missing Portuguese criminal and your friends don't want to be your friend anymore, it makes you want to emigrate to a vicious Muslim regime, where at least all the
women are treated like social outcasts. Anyway, I don't care. I am going to quietly read a book all
weekend and listen to classical music. ~ Helen Fielding,

240:That authentic experience that happens both in the artist and in the audience you can classify as a mystical experience. You can classify it as aesthetic shock, or even a psychedelic experience. Some people seek to recreate that experience through drugs. But the other way that you can do it is through art, and through spectacle. We have those experiences when we go to rock shows, or when we listen to a piece of classical music, or read a particular poem, or see a painting. ~ Janaka Stucky,

241:Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can't help it. Classical music isn't just music. It's a personal diary. An uncensored confession in the dead of night. A baring of the soul. Take a modern example. Florence and the Machine? In the song 'Cosmic Love,' she catalogs the way in which the world has gone dark, distorting her, when she, a rather intense young woman, was left bereft by a love affair. 'The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out. ~ Marisha Pessl,

242:I think that the current climate enables a lot of musicians to do relatively well. Twenty-five years ago, you could be a bass player in a folk-rock band and do pretty well - that sort of means that you're going to have to go get a day job. But a lot of my friends have learned how to write classical music for movies and produce other people and do remixes, and DJ and go on tour, and do all these different things. The more diverse their approach, the better their chances of actually having a career. ~ Moby,

243:Songs are what I listen to, almost to the exclusion of everything else. I don’t listen to classical music or jazz very often, and when people ask me what music I like, I find it very difficult to reply, because they usually want names of people, and I can only give them song titles. And mostly all I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don’t like them as much as I do ~ Nick Hornby,

244:He then expounded a remarkable theory, which had occurred to him while he was playing the clarinet during one of the power cuts that the French electricity board arranges at regular intervals. Electricity, he said, is a matter of science and logic. Classical music is a matter of art and logic. Vous voyez? Already one sees a common factor. And when you listen to the disciplined and logical progression of some of Mozart's work, the conclusion is inescapable: Mozart would have made a formidable electrician. ~ Peter Mayle,

245:Virgil Thomson, the great classical music critic, who was also a composer, but said that criticism was the only antidote he knew to pay publicity. Critics at their best are independent voices people take seriously their responsibility to see as many things as they can see, put them in the widest possible perspective, educate their readers, I really do think of myself as a teacher. Newspapers that don't carry arts criticism at all while not fulfill this function. And probably their arts journalism will be deprived as a result. ~ Terry Teachout,

246:Except Caitlyn. High school dating, drill team, school spirit—it all seemed silly to her. Why did it feel like high school was crushing her soul? She
had nothing concrete she could point to. All she knew was that she didn’t belong here.
She preferred old, used clothes to new ones; her iPod was full of classical music; and photos of castles and reproductions of old European art
covered her bedroom walls, including a Renaissance painting of a young girl in white, named Bia. It should have been pop singers on her wall, or
movie stars ~ Lisa Cach,

247:Normally classical music is set up so you have professionals on a stage and a bunch of audience - it's us versus them. You spend your entire time as an audience member looking at the back of the conductor so you're already aware of a certain kind of hierarchy when you are there: there are people who can do it, who are on stage, and you aren't on stage so you can't do it. There's also a conductor who is telling the people who are onstage exactly what to do and when to do it and so you know that person is more important than the people on stage. ~ David Lang,

248:I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time. ~ Brian Eno,

249:Writing was never work for me. It had been the same for as long as I could remember: turn on the radio to a classical music station, light a cigarette or a cigar, open the bottle. The typer did the rest. All I had to do was be there. The whole process allowed me to continue when life itself offered very little, when life itself was a horror show. There was always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself. ~ Charles Bukowski,

250:sweet music It beats love because there aren’t any wounds: in the morning she turns on the radio, Brahms or Ives or Stravinsky or Mozart. She boils the eggs counting the seconds out loud: 56, 57, 58…she peels the eggs, brings them to me in bed. After breakfast it’s the same chair and listen to the classical music. She’s on her first glass of scotch and her third cigarette. I tell her I must go to the racetrack. She’s been here about 2 nights and 2 days. “When will I see you again?” I ask. She suggests that might be up to me. I nod and Mozart plays. ~ Charles Bukowski,

251:Just as the body is shaped for movement, the mind is shaped for poetry. Rhythm and rhyme aid recall. Poems are always rhythmic but not always rhyming. In the same way that melody became rather suspect in twentieth-century classical music – atonal fractures being the mark of seriousness – so Modernism re-branded rhyme as pastoral, lovesick, feminine, superficial. Fine for kids and tea-towels, not fine for the muscular combative voice of the urban poet. It has taken a long time for rhyme to return to favour. Rap, and the rise of performance poetry, has been part of that return. ~ Carol Ann Duffy,

252:The average age of the Jazz audience is increasing rapidly. Rapidly enough to suggest that there is no replacement among young people. Young people aren't starting to listen to Jazz and carrying it along in their lives with them. Jazz is becoming more like Classical music in terms of its relationship to the audience. And just a Classical music is grappling with the problem of audience development, so is Jazz grappling with this problem. I believe, deeply that Jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say to ordinary people. But it has to be systematic about getting out the message. ~ Terry Teachout,

253:It was around this time that I’d begun trying to perfect the art of fucking with people’s minds. I’d figured out that when someone else was hogging the limelight, you could cut him down to size by bringing up a subject he didn’t know anything about. If the other person knew a lot about literature, I’d talk about the Velvet Underground; if he knew a lot about rock, I’d talk about Messiaen; if he knew a lot about classical music, I’d talk about Roy Lichtenstein; if he knew a lot about pop art, I’d talk about Jean Genet; and so on. Do that in a small provincial city and you never lose an argument. ~ Ry Murakami,

254:At one point, he dated a woman from a much more affluent family than his. She was refined and sophisticated, Freireich was a bruiser from Humboldt Park who looked and sounded like the muscle for for some Depression-era gangster. "She took me to the symphony. It was the first time I'd ever heard classical music," he remembered. "I'd never seen a ballet. I'd never seen a play. Outside of our little TV that my mother purchased, I had no education to speak of. There was no literature, no art, no music, no dance, no nothing. It was just food. And not getting killed or beaten up. I was pretty raw. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,

255:Then I met David Janko on the station. He was a young white in his early twenties. I made the mistake of talking to him, something about classical music because it was the only thing I could listen to while drinking beer in bed in the early morning. If you listen morning after morning you are bound to remember things. And when Joyce had divorced me I had mistakenly packed 2 volumes of The Lives of the Classical and Modern Composers into one of my suitcases. Most of these men's lives were so tortured that I enjoyed reading about them, thinking, well, I am in hell too and I can't even write music. ~ Charles Bukowski,

256:What about concerts and opera performances? Nowadays these bring him little pleasure [...] These people have no interest in classical music - they would much prefer operettas or films with Marika Rokk[...]
How can he possibly enjoy music under such circumstances? What good is it to invite the finest musicians and conductors of the Reich to Prague, when they must perform for such uneducated audience, who applaud only dutifully and never with enthusiasm. And, of course, the artists sense this immediately; they have a well-developed instinct about their audiences. Therefore, they play and sing any old way, without distinction. ~ Ji Weil,

257:It is to be regretted that the niceties of modern singing frighten our congregations from joining lustily in the hymns. For our part we delight in full bursts of praise, and had rather discover the ruggedness of a want of musical training than miss the heartiness of universal congregational song. The gentility which lisps the tune in well bred whispers, or leaves the singing altogether to the choir, is very like a mockery of worship. The gods of Greece and Rome may be worshipped well enough with classical music, but Jehovah can only be adored with the heart, and that music is the best for his service which gives the heart most play. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon,

258:The Mozart Effect and The Mozart Effect for Children. Pardon the pun, but his works have obviously struck a chord, since millions of the CDs and cassette tapes that accompany his books have also been sold. Strengthen the Mind features music for intelligence and learning, Heal the Body presents music for rest and relaxation, and Unlock the Creative Spirit focuses on music for imagination and creativity. Don chose other musical selections especially for the needs of pregnant mothers, infants, and children. The director of the coronary-care unit at Baltimore Hospital states that listening to classical music for half an hour produces the same effect as ten milligrams of Valium. ~ Joan Borysenko,

259:Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching’s accompaniment. Beethoven’s Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen,

260:Sometimes guitar riffs get repeated over and over ("vamping," in the lingo of musicians), but generally there is a soloist proving variation that runs above that background, lest the song sound monotonous. Philip Glass's minimalist compositions (such as the soundtrack to 'Koyaanisqatsi') deviate from much of the classical music that preceded them, with much less obvious movement than, say, the Romantic-era compositions that his work seems to rebel against, yet his works, too, consist not only of extensive repetition but also of constant (though subtle) variation. Virtually every song you've ever heard consists of exactly that: themes that recur over and over, overlaid with variations. ~ Gary F Marcus,

261:love poem to a stripper 50 years ago I watched the girls shake it and strip at The Burbank and The Follies and it was very sad and very dramatic as the light turned from green to purple to pink and the music was loud and vibrant, now I sit here tonight smoking and listening to classical music but I still remember some of their names: Darlene, Candy, Jeanette and Rosalie. Rosalie was the best, she knew how, and we twisted in our seats and made sounds as Rosalie brought magic to the lonely so long ago. now Rosalie either so very old or so quiet under the earth, this is the pimple-faced kid who lied about his age just to watch you. you were good, Rosalie in 1935, good enough to remember now when the light is yellow and the nights are slow. ~ Charles Bukowski,

262:Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us - no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines and slums without literacy or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor - that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now - for our own instant hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. ~ Caitlin Moran,

263:Your next step is to identify why you want to live like that. Look back over your notes about the kind of lifestyle you want, and think again. Why do you want to do aromatherapy before bed? Why do you want to listen to classical music while doing yoga? If the answers are “because I want to relax before bed,” and “I want to do yoga to lose weight,” ask yourself why you want to relax and why you want to lose weight. Maybe your answers will be “I don’t want to be tired when I go to work the next day,” and “I want to lose weight so that I can be more svelte.” Ask yourself “Why?” again, for each answer. Repeat this process three to five times for every item. As you continue to explore the reasons behind your ideal lifestyle, you will come to a simple realization. The whole point in ~ Marie Kond,

264:Wait, Abigail.” Dylan wiped his tool on his rag. “You like country music?” She could see where this was headed. “Not really. More of a classical music gal myself.” “Give me a chance to win you over. We have a great local band, the Silver Spurs, and they’re playing at the Chuckwagon Saturday.” “Marla’s brother’s band. Tina from Mocha Moose told me about them.” “You’re getting around.” Not in the way he hoped. “I like meeting people.” She knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as she said it. “Then come with me Saturday. Everyone from town’ll be there, and it’ll give you a chance to hang out with the home crowd.” He winked. “Thanks, but I don’t think so. Have fun, though.” She turned toward the house. “I won’t give up, you know,” he called, teasing. “I’m getting that impression. ~ Denise Hunter,

265:The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. The grace of a minuet by Handel or Couperin, the sensuality sublimated into delicate gesture to be found in many Italian composers or in Mozart, the tranquil, composed readiness for death in Bach – always there may be heard in these works a defiance, a death-defying intrepidity, a gallantry, and a note of superhuman laughter, of immortal gay serenity. Let that same note also sound in our Glass Bead Games, and in our whole lives, acts, and sufferings. ~ Hermann Hesse,

266:Adorno echoed the words and works of Karl Marx in his music. Whereas Marx focused on the economic aspect, Adorno placed his emphasis on the role played by culture in maintaining the politically apathetic status quo. Music of the 12-atonal métier would be even more powerful than Marx’s economic assault on western capitalism. Adorno was of course a serious student and polished writer and performer of classical music. He was, perhaps, the most important music “new ground” philosopher, an intellectual giant in modernism in music. While attending the University of Frankfurt in Germany, he became friends with Alban Berg and studied composition under him from 1924. There Adorno learned the “dialectics” of George Hegel and applied it to his compositions. Adorno became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfort. ~ John Coleman,

267:Under the influence of this incantation those who are in any or every way inferior can labour more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level. But that is not all. Under the same influence, those who come, or could come, nearer to a full humanity, actually draw back from it for fear of being undemocratic. I am credibly informed that young humans now sometimes suppress an incipient taste for classical music or good literature because it might prevent their Being like Folks; that people who would really wish to be—and are offered the Grace which would enable them to be—honest, chaste, or temperate, refuse it. To accept might make them Different, might offend again the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals. ~ C S Lewis,

268:At least Lars was curious about the appeal of jazz to black folk; for most observers, such ponderation is akin to contemplating why gorillas like bananas. The attractiveness of jazz to the nonblack is well documented in publicly funded documentaries where experts speak of jazz in the past tense. They look authoritatively into the camera and ingratiate themselves with the Man by saying things like, “White people were hearing something in jazz that says something deeply about their experience. I’m not sure that it would have been this way if we were not a country of immigrants . . . so many people felt kind of displaced . . . I think that was part of its amazing appeal, was how it spoke to feeling out of sort and out of joint and maladjusted.”
What hogwash. Does my fondness for classical music make me well adjusted? Besides, people who are really fucked up don’t turn to jazz; they turn to heroin, opium, whiskey, and Vonnegut. ~ Paul Beatty,

269:Who Am I?
I’m a creator, a visionary, a poet. I approach the world with the eyes of an artist, the ears of a musician, and the soul of a writer. I see rainbows where others see only rain, and possibilities when others see only problems. I love spring flowers, summer’s heat on my body, and the beauty of the dying leaves in the fall. Classical music, art museums, and ballet are sources of inspiration, as well as blues music and dim cafes. I love to write; words flow easily from my fingertips, and my heart beats rapidly with excitement as an idea becomes a reality on the paper in front of me. I smile often, laugh easily, and I weep at pain and cruelty. I'm a learner and a seeker of knowledge, and I try to take my readers along on my journey. I am passionate about what I do. I learned to dream through reading, learned to create dreams through writing, and learned to develop dreamers through teaching. I shall always be a dreamer. Come dream with me. ~ Sharon M Draper,

270:I wondered straightaway how he could sit at peace there, of an evening, with the row of heads staring down at him. There were no pictures, no flowers: only the heads of chamois. The concession to melody was the radiogram and the stack of records of classical music.

Foolishly, I had asked, "Why only chamois?"

He answered at once, "They fear Man."

This might have led to an argument about animals in general, domestic, wild, and those which adapt themselves to the whims and vagaries of the human race; but instead he changed the subject abruptly, put on a Sibelius record, and presently made love to me, intently but without emotion. I was surprised but pleased. I thought, "We are suited to one another. There will be no demands. Each of us will be self-contained and not beholden to the other."

All this came true, but something was amiss. There was a flaw - not only the nonappearance of children, but a division of the spirit. The communion of flesh which brought us together was in reality a chasm, and I despised the bridge we made. Perhaps he did as well. I had been endeavouring for ten years to build for my self a ledge of safety. ("The Chamois") ~ Daphne du Maurier,

271:When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats—their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives.
Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, more animalistic. No classical music for us—no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in means, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor—that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now—for our instant, hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
You must never, never forget when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad post code. It's a miracle when someone from a bad post code gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all. ~ Caitlin Moran,

272:You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home. ~ Paul Auster,

273:It might be imagined that certain people in history—the naturally gifted, the geniuses—have either somehow bypassed the Apprenticeship Phase or have greatly shortened it because of their inherent brilliance. To support such an argument, people will bring up the classic examples of Mozart and Einstein, who seemed to have emerged as creative geniuses out of nowhere. With the case of Mozart, however, it is generally agreed among classical music critics that he did not write an original and substantial piece of music until well after ten years of composing. In fact, a study of some seventy great classical composers determined that with only three exceptions, all of the composers had needed at least ten years to produce their first great work, and the exceptions had somehow managed to create theirs in nine years. Einstein began his serious thought experiments at the age of sixteen. Ten years later he came up with his first revolutionary theory of relativity. It is impossible to quantify the time he spent honing his theoretical skills in those ten years, but is not hard to imagine him working three hours a day on this particular problem, which would yield more than 10,000 hours after a decade. What in fact separates Mozart and Einstein from others is the extreme youth with which they began their apprenticeships and the intensity with which they practiced, stemming from their total immersion in the subject. It is often the case that in our younger years we learn faster, absorb more deeply, and yet retain a kind of creative verve that tends to fade as we get older. ~ Robert Greene,

274:Can you please also give me instructions for dancing?”

“Excuse me?”

“I need instructions for dancing. Like how do I move my body to music in front of other people? Break it down. Step by step.”

“Seriously? Dancing isn’t one of those things that come with instructions. It’s not like putting together Ikea furniture.”

“Please help me.”

“Well, first of all, this is not the sort of music that will be playing.” She motions to the pianist, who is bald and bearded, which I’ve always found to be a bizarre combination. You would think you would want cranial and mandibular hair consistency.

“No Ravel’s Bolero. Got it.”

“No classical music, period. They’ll probably just play all the crap that’s on the radio.”

“I amend my original request. I need instructions for dancing to noise.”

“You just move your body to the beat. Feel the music.” Miney puts her arms up and sways to sounds I do not hear. She closes her eyes, leans on the tips of her toes, and jumps. After approximately ninety seconds, she stops and looks at me. “Your turn.”

“I don’t think so.” Miney doesn’t respond. She just waits.

“Fine.” I copy her, jump up and down, though I don’t actually jump down, which is a misnomer. I let gravity do its job. My sneakers make discordant squeaks along the marble floor.

“No. Stop. You look like you’re having a seizure. Think of dancing like having a conversation but with the music instead of with another person. It’s all intuition and instinct.”

“Right. Because I’m good at all three of those things. Intuition, instinct, and having conversations with other people.”

“Little D, sarcasm becomes you. ~ Julie Buxbaum,

275:Bucket had started his criminal career in Braas, not far from when Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There he had gotten together with some like-minded peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newsstand was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who has chosen the name- The Violence, in English, not swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English.

The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar academic success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake.
So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braas from the people in charge of the concert hall in Vaxjo. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music, they might like to put in am appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra, Musica Viate.

Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newsstand, and instead went into Vaxjo to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible lesson in respect. It all went well, except that Bucket’s leather glove happened to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the personal item in question.

Losing the glove was not good. Bucket had traveled to Vaxjo by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braas that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and adress inside the glove, in case he lost it."
For more quotes from the novel visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com ~ Jonas Jonasson,

276:Breakfast! My favorite meal- and you can be so creative. I think of bowls of sparkling berries and fresh cream, baskets of Popovers and freshly squeezed orange juice, thick country bacon, hot maple syrup, panckes and French toast - even the nutty flavor of Irish oatmeal with brown sugar and cream. Breaksfast is the place I splurge with calories, then I spend the rest of the day getting them off! I love to use my prettiest table settings - crocheted placemats with lace-edged napkins and old hammered silver. And whether you are inside in front of a fire, candles burning brightly on a wintery day - or outside on a patio enjoying the morning sun - whether you are having a group of friends and family, a quiet little brunch for two, or an even quieter little brunch just for yourself, breakfast can set the mood and pace of the whole day.

And Sunday is my day. Sometimes I think we get caught up in the hectic happenings of the weeks and months and we forget to take time out to relax. So one Sunday morning I decided to do things differently - now it's gotten to be a sort of ritual! This is what I do: at around 8:30 am I pull myself from my warm cocoon, fluff up the pillows and blankets and put some classical music on the stereo. Then I'm off to the kitchen, where I very calmly (so as not to wake myself up too much!) prepare my breakfast, seomthing extra nice - last week I had fresh pineapple slices wrapped in bacon and broiled, a warm croissant, hot chocolate with marshmallows and orange juice. I put it all on a tray with a cloth napkin, my book-of-the-moment and the "Travel" section of the Boston Globe and take it back to bed with me. There I spend the next two hours reading, eating and dreaming while the snowflakes swirl through the treetops outside my bedroom window. The inspiring music of Back or Vivaldi adds an exquisite elegance to the otherwise unruly scene, and I am in heaven. I found time to get in touch with myself and my life and i think this just might be a necessity! Please try it for yourself, and someone you love. ~ Susan Branch,

277:Finally, every society develops a system of aesthetic standards that get manifested in everything from decorative art, music, and dance to the architecture and planning of buildings and communities. There are many different ways we could examine artistic systems. One way of thinking about it is to observe the degree to which a society's aesthetics reflect clear lines and solid boundaries versus fluid ones. Many Western cultures favor clean, tight boundaries whereas many Eastern cultures prefer more fluid, indiscriminate lines. In most Western homes, kitchen drawers are organized so that forks are with forks and knives are with knives. The walls of a room are usually uniform in color, and when a creative shift in color does occur, it usually happens at a corner or along a straight line midway down the wall. Pictures are framed with straight edges, molding covers up seams in the wall, and lawns are edged to form a clear line between the sidewalk and the lawn. Why? Because we view life in terms of classifications, categories, and taxonomies. And cleanliness itself is largely defined by the degree of order that exists. It has little to do with sanitation and far more to do with whether things appear to be in their proper place. Maintaining boundaries is essential in the Western world; otherwise categories begin to disintegrate and chaos sets in.13 Most Americans want dandelion-free lawns and roads with clear lanes prescribing where to drive and where not to drive. Men wear ties to cover the adjoining fabric on the shirts that they put on before going to the symphony, where they listen to classical music based on a scale with seven notes and five half steps. Each note has a fixed pitch, defined in terms of the lengths of the sound waves it produces.14 A good performance occurs when the musicians hit the notes precisely. In contrast, many Eastern cultures have little concern in everyday life for sharp boundaries and uniform categories. Different colors of paint may be used at various places on the same wall. And the paint may well “spill” over onto the window glass and ceiling. Meals are a fascinating array of ingredients where food is best enjoyed when mixed together on your plate. Roads and driving patterns are flexible. The lanes ebb and flow as needed depending on the volume of traffic. In a place like Cambodia or Nigeria, the road space is available for whichever direction a vehicle needs it most, whatever the time of day. And people often meander along the road in their vehicles the same way they walk along a path. There are many other ways aesthetics between one place and another could be contrasted. But the important point is some basic understanding of how cultures differ within the realm of aesthetics. Soak in the local art of a place and chalk it up to informing your strategy for international business. ~ David Livermore,

278:There's one big difference between the poor and the rich,' Kite says, taking a drag from his cigarette. We are in a pub, at lunch-time. John Kite is always, unless stated otherwise, smoking a fag, in a pub, at lunch-time.
'The rich aren't evil, as so many of my brothers would tell you. I've known rich people -- I have played on their yachts -- and they are not unkind, or malign, and they do not hate the poor, as many would tell you. And they are not stupid -- or at least, not any more than the poor are. Much as I find amusing the idea of a ruling class of honking toffs, unable to put their socks on without Nanny helping them, it is not true. They build banks, and broker deals, and formulate policy, all with perfect competency.
'No -- the big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich are blithe. They believe nothing can ever really be so bad, They are born with the lovely, velvety coating of blitheness -- like lanugo, on a baby -- and it is never rubbed off by a bill that can't be paid; a child that can't be educated; a home that must be left for a hostel, when the rent becomes too much.
'Their lives are the same for generations. There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you're comfortably middle-class, what's the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90 per cent and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine -- but maybe cheaper -- go on holiday -- but somewhere nearer -- and pay off your mortgage -- although maybe later.
'Consider, now, then, the poor. What's the worst a government policy can do to them? It can cancel their operation, with no recourse to private care. It can run down their school -- with no escape route to a prep. It can have you out of your house and into a B&B by the end of the year. When the middle-classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats -- their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives.
'Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us -- no walking around National Trust properties, or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful; dying in mines, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate, then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor -- that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better, later. We live now -- for our instant, hot, fast treats, to prep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
'You must never, never forget, when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad postcode, It's a miracle when someone from a bad postcode gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all. ~ Caitlin Moran,

279:The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice.

Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember.

“Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms.

She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire.

Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.”

“What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin.

“Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?”

“A piano.”

“Simon.”

“A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?”

Clary sighed, exasperated.

“Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.”

“Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets.

“Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.”

“That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.”

“You really have to DTR, Simon.”

“What?”

“Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?”

Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?”

“Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—”

“Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother.

where are you? It’s an emergency. ~ Cassandra Clare,

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