A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.
Writers do not have the privilege of sleep. There is always a story coming alive in their heads, constantly composing. Whether they choose it or not.
The child now shewed her a narrow and rugged descent, made by cutting the red clay and stones, of which the cliffs are here composed, into a sort of rude steps.
Composers in the old days used to keep strictly to the base of the theme, as their real subject. Beethoven varies the melody, harmony and rhythms so beautifully.
I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.
Other composers have taken this particular technique much further than I in the meantime, with the result that the Law of Diminishing Returns has begun to apply.
It is still true that it is easier to compose a poem in the form of a manual for adjusting a VCR than it is to write a piece using just tuning as a symphony.
The Western musical canon came about not merely by accumulation, but by opposition and subversion, both to the ruling powers on whom composers depended for their livelihoods and to other musics.
The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.
Music is much like fucking, but some composers can't climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent.
A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.
You know too well the forces which compose their army to dread their superior numbers.
I'm trying to interpret the film through the director's head, but it all comes out through me. So, a composer is kind of like a psychic medium.
I'm like any other composer. If you give me five years to write a symphony, I'm still going to be asking for more time two days before it's due.
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.
When I'm composing a scene for the first time, I try to imitate my character. The less critical distance the better - particularly when they're acting badly.
In fact, I think when we carry out a complete analysis of time, I think what we're going to discover is that like matter, time is composed of elemental, discrete types.
The improvisational nature of jazz musicianship is such that a truly competent performer must be prepared to function as an on-the-spot composer who is expected to contribute to the orchestration in progress, not simply to execute the score as it is ...
The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.
Once we realize the extraordinary power we have to compose our lives, we'll move from passive, conditioned thinking to being co-creators of our fate.
The scientist is also a composer... You could think of science as discovering one particular thing - a supernova or whatever. You could also think of it as discovering this whole new way of seeing the world.
