Jon Hopkins Quotes

Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them.

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

Life has a way of setting things in order and leaving them be. Very tidy, is life.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

We live in a very chaotic world that sometimes we - it just seems like a mess. One of the reasons why we listen to music, and to great classical music in particular, is that everything is in an order and in a place and has a beauty that you see in nature, that you see and that people look for when they look for God.

Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.

Many of the familiar little things that we use every day have typically evolved over a period of time to a state of familiarity. They balance form and function, elegance and economy, success and failure in ways that are not only acceptable, but also admirable.

Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.

You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining.

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness.

It's not refreshing where there is confusion or any kind of discomfort in a group that has to work that closely together.

Extreme complication is contrary to art.

When time and space and change converge, we find place. We arrive in Place when we resolve things. Place is peace of mind and understanding. Place is knowledge of self. Place is resolution.

The old, sad art colors are gone. Now I paint bright colors. I paint paintings which are happy, where children are laughing and playing with animals. I paint paradise on Earth. I still paint sadness sometimes, but there is sadness in the world, too.

I think there will be more smiles when the smoke clears.

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves.

I feel like all of my characters now take this congested situation, they clash, and from there you purge yourself.

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

You can say battle or war or whatever, but in the end, it's music. It's not really violent in intent at all, it's really just about expression and celebrating that in itself.

You always have to wrestle with chaos.

All who wish peace ought to unite in the means which may facilitate its attainment.

Many things complicated by nature are restored by reason.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.