33 Quotes by Andre Previn

I stuck around in Hollywood for too long. I was there a long time, and when I left, I was smart enough to realise that what I was leaving was not just the movie business. I wanted to get rid of the whole atmosphere.

John Williams is, without question, talented. He writes very good scores and very good melodies and all that.

The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played.

If you're going to do good work, the work has to scare you.

There are a million things in music I know nothing about. I just want to narrow down that figure.

You can chase a Beethoven symphony all your life and never catch up.

At MGM, you knew you were going to be working next year; you knew you were going to get paid. But I was too ambitious musically to settle for it. And I wanted to gamble with whatever talent I might have had.

Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.

People who don't do jazz think it's black magic. But really, it's just a matter of getting used to it. It's fun to gamble. The trick is not to fall back on the things you've done before.