In music the present is extended.

- Ned Rorem

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

- Ned Rorem

The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.

- Ned Rorem

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

- Ned Rorem

It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.

- Ned Rorem

Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.

- Ned Rorem

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

- Ned Rorem

Divine fires do not blaze each day but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence.

- Ned Rorem

If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.

- Ned Rorem