33 Quotes by Andre Previn

The extraordinary mystique of hers made you think she lived on rose petals and listened to nothing but Mozart, but it wasn't true. She was quite funny and ribald. She could tell a dirty joke. She played charades with a great sense of fun and vulgarity, and she could be quite bitchy.

When you're working with music that is invariably better than you are, it's difficult to become swell-headed.

When I composed, I heard my music played by the orchestra within days of completion of the score. No master at a conservatory, no matter how revered, can teach as much by verbal criticism as can a cold and analytical hearing of one's own music being played.

I don't even have a cell phone. I don't know how they work.

I have a great many shortcomings, but writing for something on time has never bothered me.

I finally wasn't interested in writing music that played while actors talked.

I found that jazz musicians, possibly more than their classical counterparts, wear long-standing friendships easily and gracefully.

I admire Elliott Carter endlessly. But I have no ambitions to emulate him.

I run around so much that I finally reasoned that composing is the one musical endeavour which you can do anywhere, anytime.