George Gershwin Quotes

Quotes about:

• Life is a lot like jazz. It's best when you improvise.

  George Gershwin

  Music, Jazz Hands, Cool Jazz

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  120 Copy quote

• I like to think of music as an emotional science.

  George Gershwin

  Emotional, Thinking, Gershwin

  "The Composer in the Machine Age". Book by George Gershwin (Page 388), 1933.

  43 Copy quote

• True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.

  George Gershwin

  Music, Inspiration, People

  59 Copy quote

• Originality is the only thing that counts. But the originator uses material and ideas that occur round him and pass through him. And out of his experience comes the original creation.

  George Gershwin

  Ideas, Use, Originality

  46 Copy quote

• Look at the piano. You'll notice that there are white notes and black notes. Figure out the difference between them and you'll be able to make whatever kind of music you want.

  George Gershwin

  White, Differences, Piano

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  42 Copy quote

• I frequently hear music in the heart of noise.

  George Gershwin

  Music, Heart, Noise

  Letter to Isaac Goldberg in "The Memory of All That" by Joan Peyser (p. 80), 1993.

  25 Copy quote

• The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself...Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.

  George Gershwin

  Inspiration, Waiting, Doe

  44 Copy quote

• Jazz is one of the best things that you can find in your life, it can always be your friend.

  George Gershwin

  Music, Jazz, Best Things

  45 Copy quote

• Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music.

  George Gershwin

  Powerful, Blood, People

  "The Relation of Jazz to American Music", in Henry Cowell (ed.) American Composers on American Music, 1933.

  39 Copy quote

• It is always possible to create something original.

  George Gershwin

  Originals, Gershwin

  27 Copy quote

• I didn't even start playing the piano until I was about 13 or 14. I guess I must have had a little talent or whatever-you-call-it, but I practised regularly, and that's what counts.

  George Gershwin

  Piano, Littles, Talent

  33 Copy quote

• Music sets up certain vibration which unquestionably results in a physical reaction. Eventually the proper vibration for every person will be found and utilized.

  George Gershwin

  Vibrations, Reactions, Results

  35 Copy quote

• Why should I limit myself to only one woman when I can have as many women as I want?

  George Gershwin

  Want, Limits, Should

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  34 Copy quote

• When jazz is played in another nation, it is called American. When it is played in another country, it sounds false. Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

  George Gershwin

  Country, America, Energy

  "Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources". Book editing by Daniel Albright (University of Chicago Press), essay "The Composer in the Machine Age" (1933), 2004.

  14 Copy quote

• All great composers of the past spent most of their time studying. Feeling alone won't do the job. A man also needs technique.

  George Gershwin

  Jobs, Past, Men

  7 Copy quote

• What the hell do you want to work for somebody else for? Work for yourself!

  George Gershwin

  Work, Writing, Want

  6 Copy quote

• Writing music is not so much inspiration as hard work.

  George Gershwin

  Inspiration, Hard Work, Writing

  22 Copy quote

• My people are Americans. My time is today.

  George Gershwin

  People, Today, My Time

  21 Copy quote

• Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

  George Gershwin

  America, Energy, Jazz

  Quoted in D Morgenstern Composers on Music (1958).

  11 Copy quote

• Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come.

  George Gershwin

  Song, Inspiration, Two

  18 Copy quote

• When I'm in my normal mood, music drips from my fingers.

  George Gershwin

  Normal, Mood, Fingers

  14 Copy quote

• The extraordinary thing about my mother, she's so modest about me.

  George Gershwin

  Mother, Modest, Extraordinary Things

  6 Copy quote

• Not many composers have ideas. Far more of them know how to use strange instruments which do not require ideas.

  George Gershwin

  Ideas, Use, Strange

  1930 'The Composer in the Machine Age'.

  11 Copy quote

• Gershwin's melodic gift was phenomenal. His songs contain the essence of New York in the 1920s and have deservedly become classics of their kind, part of the 20th-century folk-song tradition in the sense that they are popular music which has been spread by oral tradition (for many must have sung a Gershwin song without having any idea who wrote it).

  George Gershwin

  Song, New York, Essence

  27 Copy quote

• Modern European composers...have very largely received their stimulus, their rhythms and impulses from Machine Age America. They have a much older tradition of musical technique which has helped them put into musical terms a little more clearly the thoughts that originated here. They can express themselves more glibly.

  George Gershwin

  America, Musical, Age

  "The Composer in the Machine Age". Book by George Gershwin (p. 386), 1933.

  17 Copy quote

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