Igor Stravinsky Quotes

An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality.

If you're always thinking about someone else's work, about the tradition you're working in, how can you possibly make anything good?

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard.

In the music industry, it's pretty easy to make an album just because you want to keep going, like, 'This is the formula.' But the formula is your life. You have to live your life and you have to live it well - that's the formula.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

There's nothing like the eureka moment of knocking off a song that didn't exist before - I won't compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.

Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

I love originating shows and originating songs - there is nothing better than being the first one to get to do a song.

To the extent that independent means you're willing to attempt to put your own ideas, personality, and commitment to the material on screen, then of course I hope I'm independent until the day I die.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.

To have everything written for you... It's not really creating. That's why I think symphony drummers are so limited. They 're limited to exactly what was played a hundred years before them by a thousand other drummers.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

Music. It's all creativity right here, right now.

People ask what was the first piece of music I wrote. There was no first piece.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

As a creative person, you want to start with a blank canvas.

The great songs just come out. If it comes quick, just leave it that way.

I love to be creative.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

When you find great songs, and somehow you get a spark in a little way, it can become brand new.

Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.