John Corigliano Quotes

Academy Awards don't really solve anything.

If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.

I compose music for films, and by the grace of God, I've got a few awards. That's it.

Winning the Pulitzer is not that big a deal. I have seen hundreds of plays that have won the prize and you couldn't sit half way through it. The Pulitzer is a common prize that means very little.

It takes lot of years for a composer to make a name.

An Oscar means a lot of things because it's like the ultimate award for a filmmaker so it feels great. But I think you have to consider awards with some distance and not get obsessed with it. When you're creating you shouldn't think about it.

Well, you know the old line - to be nominated is what it's all about. I think that I've done pretty well - I've had about 46, or 47 nominations from my movies, and my films have won about 12 awards in total, so I don't really have any complaints.

People go to see beautiful paintings to see how much they cost. Wow. The practical value is that it shows you what the human spirit can do.

Now, there are so many movies, so many festivals, and so many awards going on, each judged with each other, like your work is worse than others and that's not fair. How can you tell what's best and what's worst from these awards? We're talking about art.

The BAFTA is both absolutely fantastic and sort of meaningless at the same time.

I have records in gold, in platinum, I have two Oscars, I have Grammys and so on.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

Unless the work of art has wholly exhausted its maker's attention, it fails. This is why works of great significance are demanding and why they are infinitely rewarding.

Great art should be shown with great excitement.

No matter how hard I tried to popularize, I never cheapened a great work of art.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

I would rather write or record something great and have it overlooked than do mediocre work and have it be popular.

I've won some pretty cool things in my life and I have a lot of great titles.

I do want to sell as many records and win as many awards as I can. The awards though, they don't necessarily determine if you're good or not. I know that now.

Art isn't held with the same high regard as it is after success. In any country, in any language, you're a loser if you're making music until you prove otherwise.

I'm not the most in-tune guy with what is getting nominated and winning awards in general.

It's great, I guess, when your paintings are hanging up in a museum.

This great imperialistic world called the United States has made us believe that an Oscar is the most important thing in the world for an actor. But if you think about it for five minutes you realise it can't be.

I know that often times a lot of people who work in music, whether they be labels and so on or even artists, want personal recognition. We want to be recognized for something, for what we did. I'd rather my song be recognized for what it's doing and that's important. It's not so important how many people know me.

A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable.