If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
Dmitri ShostakovichRead
Football is the ballet of the masses.
Interpretation
Football is likened to ballet, highlighting its beauty and grace despite being a sport for the common people.
Dmitri Shostakovich's quote equates football to ballet, suggesting that both activities possess a level of artistry and finesse, albeit one is often seen as high culture while the other is a popular pastime. This comparison emphasizes how football, often regarded as a simple game, embodies complex choreography and passion, thereby elevating it to a form of art appreciated by the masses.
In practice
In a speech about teamwork, one could quote Shostakovich to glorify the grace in collaborative efforts.
If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.
I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.
What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.
Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.
When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.
The best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There's more of a chance then that they'll survive.
If the imagination is shackled, and nothing is described but what we see, seldom will anything truly great be produced either in Painting or Poetry
So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself; for you must remember that your attentions will not merely celebrate a beauty but create one; that yours is love that brings it own birth with it, just as Plato has declared, and that you should therefore give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them
I wear myself out and struggle with the sun. And what a sun here! It would be necessary to paint here with gold and gemstones. It is wonderful.
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
Camera lies all the time. It’s all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you… the moment you’ve made a choice, you’re lying about something larger. Lying is an ugly word. I don’t mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
I've attended many concerts where I felt let down and I was wishing it would be something else. Not that it's their duty to please me, but at the same time, I think a lot about what it's like through the eyes of the consumer, the fan. I want not to pander to the audience, but to be aware of them.
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