Igor Stravinsky Quotes

I sang in church choir all my life, through elementary school, junior high and high school.

Over the years I've had strong friendships with many priests. As a matter of fact, a group of Christian leaders from the National Council of Churches came to my house in the 1950s to ask me to write music for a Mass. I didn't think I was ready at that time. So, in a sense, I guess joining the church and writing the Mass was a culmination of a long journey that is still going on.

There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.

I'm really open to just about anything but I think the real dream is to be able to write my own thing.

It's part of what I do at my piano - the hymns. And then I write.

Once the Mass is restored to its rightful place, we will again see choirs being developed.

Music had always been the handmaid of the Roman liturgy.

There is no dogma that the organ or harmonium can be used in church, but not the drum.

Thus the slogan should be reversed: Catholics taught the world what music is supposed to sound like, and, more importantly, what it is supposed to mean.

I listen to Bach a great deal. In general I like to listen to hymns and liturgical music.

Originally, I wanted to be a composer. I always tell people, 'I think of myself as a composer.'

I wish I were a really good photographer.

I've always felt a great affinity with music. I've felt myself to be more of a musician than anything else, though I'm not proficient in any one instrument. But I think I have a musical sense of things... and writing seems to me to be a musical experience - rhythmically and in many other ways.

My parents were in the local church choir, and I used to go along and sing and play the organ at all the weddings and christenings.

Writing music is my one and only passion and joy.

I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.

A composer's job involves the decoration of fragments of time.

To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.

I think it's funny how people get confused when they think about church music, because a lot of times there is a soloist who stands out, but my church wasn't like that at all.

It is the Mass that matters.

The real writer is one who really writes.

I would like to sit and and write some acoustic stuff. That's what I want to do. It means creatively, that's what I want so I need to do that for myself and then I'll see.

I think all musicians and producers, they know the real goal is to come up with a record that is entertaining and not boring, that's the goal. I think if everyone agrees that that's the goal then it doesn't matter who's the band and it doesn't matter who's the producer. It just means that that you try to realise the ambition no matter what the situation is or who the people are.

I'm not a real good musician, but I can write [a song] pretty well. I experiment once in a while to see what I can do. I find out the best I can do is stay with ballads.

I guess it would be if I wanted to, just lay back and predominantly write songs when I can't go on a stage anymore.