Howard Dietz Quotes

I try to steal something from the great singers. Of course, I don't want to imitate their sound, but I try to do a sort of compromise.

I don't get my inspiration from a specific source. It's more like if you listen to a good tune, it gives me inspiration to write a better tune.

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

I have no shame in making music that maybe, if you listen to it long enough, you'll realize you've heard this or that part of it before. I'm still very excited by an amazingly written song, so that's really the thing that I work on when I make records with people.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

It's easy for a singer to sometimes pick up on another singer's sound, but that's just copying.

I try to take whatever I can from the songs I grew up listening to, these vibed-out pop numbers, and make them my own in some weird way.

You can't help but have ideas when you're inspired musically.

I do not know who sings my songs / Before they are sung by me.

I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that's in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and try to tap into what the music's saying and just kind of follow that, you know. I mean, nine times out of 10, I'm just kind of following where the music takes me.

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.

I don't try to make the guitar sound like the harpsichord or lute. That makes you end up being like a bad copy.

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

Everything I see and hear... I will take ideas from anyplace, anywhere, anytime, and life has become a song to me. I'm always looking for a song.

We were playing popular music, but we were doing our own arrangements because we were too lazy to sit down and figure out the originals.

No, no, the songs write themselves, almost.

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

There is a formula that allows you to write a decent song. But a song like 'You're All I Need to Get By,' it just writes itself.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

I never presumed that a technique of composition or an idea was so special that just using it would guarantee the quality of the music.

Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn't have anything to do with me, but it's just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.

I take stuff because I'm inspired by it.

Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it.

Part of Michael's uniqueness, I think, comes from the fact that he worked with music. He had a tape which he gave me with many different compositions, really eclectic. These pieces of music were sources of inspiration.