My future is in my past and my past is my present. I must now make the present my future.
Vladimir HorowitzRead
Always there should be a little mistake here and there - I am for it. The people who don't do mistakes are cold like ice. It takes risk to make a mistake. If you don't take risk, you are boring.
Interpretation
Embracing mistakes is necessary for growth and creativity.
Vladimir Horowitz highlights the value of making mistakes as a fundamental part of being human. He suggests that those who avoid risks and mistakes may lack warmth and vibrancy, while those who are willing to take chances and make errors are more engaging and lively.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage students to embrace their failures.
My future is in my past and my past is my present. I must now make the present my future.
I may play the same program from one recital to the next, but I will play it differently, and because it is always different, it is always new.
I must tell you I take terrible risks. Because my playing is very clear, when I make a mistake you hear it. If you want me to play only the notes without any specific dynamics, I will never make one mistake. Never be afraid to dare.
The score is not a bible, and I am never afraid to dare. The music is behind those dots.
You have to open the music, so to speak, and see what's behind the notes because the notes are the same whether it is the music of Bach or someone else.
For me, the intellect is always the guide but not the goal of the performance. Three things have to be coordinated, and not one must stick out. Not too much intellect because it can become scholastic. Not too much heart because it can become schmaltz. Not too much technique because you become a mechanic.
And it is very much lamented,... That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye That you might see your shadow.
Knowledge doesn't really form part of human nature. Conflict, combat, the outcome of the combat, and, consequently, risk and chance are what gives rise to knowledge. Knowledge is not instinctive; it is counter instinctive, just as it is not natural but counter natural.
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
I am like a man so busy in letting rooms in one end of his house, that he can't stop to put out the fire that is burning the other.
Everything you touch touches you.
It's in the act of making things that we figure out who we are.
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