If they say they don't like the way I play Beethoven, then I can swallow that, and maybe they're right. But if they don't like what I've written, then it's about me.
Stephen HoughRead
All things of beauty can speak to us of God, and I'm very happy to listen to and be inspired by people of every religious background.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Beauty has a universal quality that connects us to the divine and inspires us through various religions.
In this quote, Stephen Hough reflects on the idea that beauty transcends individual beliefs and can be a source of spiritual connection. He appreciates the inspiration that can be drawn from the beauty found in diverse religious expressions, suggesting that art and beauty have the power to bridge divides and foster understanding among people of different faiths.
Themes
BeautyInspirationArtSpiritualityReligion
In practice
Example use cases
During a talk on the intersection of art and faith, one could use this quote to highlight beauty's role in spirituality.
More from Stephen Hough
All quotes →Unlike sport, music is not about winning or keeping fit or promoting your town or school; it's about celebrating, to a level approaching ecstasy, the deepest human longings.
Stephen HoughRead
Life is an incurable disease leading to death, but it's also an unrequested gift, which, if we can manage to keep giving it away to others, can keep giving back everything to us.
Stephen HoughRead
Live in the present moment. The past and future are nonexistent. Only the present can be grasped or, better, embraced.
Stephen HoughRead
In Britten or Berg, there's a tension between the sweet and the sour, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the tonal and the atonal, the happy and the sad. That, to me, is what all western art is about - that tension. It's why we want to say anything at all.
Stephen HoughRead
There are artists who delight listeners with their wild and daring individuality; there are others who uncover the written score with reverence. There are few who can do both.
Stephen HoughRead
Similar quotes
You should create a work that is so valuable it might eventually sell at a high price, but you've got to concentrate on how you create that artwork.
Yayoi KusamaRead
I'm a writer and, therefore, automatically a suspicious character.
Alfred HitchcockRead
My duty is to make probable the improbable. If I tell you how I did it, I will ruin your experience.
Alejandro Gonzalez InarrituRead
A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting.
Marcel DuchampRead
When anyone seriously pursues an art - painting, poetry, sculpture, composing - over twenty or thirty years, the sustained discipline carries the artist down to the countryside of grief, and that descent, resisted so long proves invigorating. . . . As I've gotten older, I find I am able to be nourished more by sorrow and to distinguish it from depression.
Robert BlyRead
There is so much that glows in the circus, from flames to lanterns to stars. I have heard the expression “trick of the light” applied to sights within Le Cirque des Reves so frequently that I sometimes suspect the entirety of the circus is itself a complex illusion of illumination” .
Erin MorgensternRead