F. Murray Abraham Quotes

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

In addition to being the most beautiful score I have ever sung, 'Piazza' gave me the opportunity to honor the matriarchs of my Southern family.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.

Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators, they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty - if we don't understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it's like hearing music.

Music is an emotional experience, and that is what imprints itself on the soul. And I think for me, any great art is art which communicates human emotion.

But when you get music and words together, that can be a very powerful thing.

In music, you feel a connection to the voice and think about the person behind it. In art that's secondary.

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

What is music for? It's to make you feel good.

Music happens to be an art form that transcends language.

When I don't know what the music is going to be for a scene, I imagine some sort of orchestration going on and damned if they don't usually come up with a similar kind of thing.

I like the fact that music is more abstract.

Music is real; it's something you can touch and feel.

I just want to make art that connects with people and moves them on an emotional level. Any time I can put out music and place a story behind it and have people watch it and go, 'Wow, I was affected by that,' to me, feels like I've done my job.

I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

The value of music is not dazzling yourself and others with technique.

Even in the most beautiful music there are some silences, which are there so we can witness the importance of silence.

Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There's no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn't. It's completely objective, and the best always rise to the top.

Music moves me - duh - and that is like having a window opening on a heightened reality, but the effect is fleeting: When the music ends, the magic, the uplifting, vanishes and the window slams shut. Words, on the other hand, by the nature of how they work, emotions evoked by dint of carefully laid out thoughts, have a more lingering effect.

Music at times is more like perfume than mathematics.

You're in good spirits when you create and produce great music. All situations inspire music in different ways, man, from good situations, bad situations, depression, falling in love, falling out of love. I've been going through all those type of things.

The language of film is further and further away from the language of theater and is closer to music. It's abstract but still narrative.

I can't write music unless I'm deeply connected to it and that connection almost always comes from some experience that I have had or am having.

The claims I'm making for art are simply the claims that we naturally make around music or around poetry. We're much more relaxed around those art forms. We're willing to ask, 'How could this find a place in my heart?'