42 Quotes by Gian Carlo Menotti

As a little boy of 3 or 4, I became lame. Something was wrong with my right leg. There are pictures of me being pulled around in a little wagon. The doctors didn't know what to do. So my nanny took me to the miraculous Madonna at Sacro Monte in Varese, the priest blessed me, and I walked.

It's always what you did before. The year before is always so much better. Even when the critics hated what you did then, it always looks better five years later.

It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.

It takes a Bobby White to make a tired 90-year-old composer write a song about love.

I'm not very sympathetic to the tendency to bring art to the people.

I have the feeling that everybody was waiting for me to die so they could rediscover me. Then they found out I'm not dead yet, so they are rediscovering me while I'm still alive.

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.

Love, which, in concert with Abstinence, established Faith, and which, along with Patience, builds up Chastity, is like the columns that sustain the four corners of a house. For it was that same Love which planted a glorious garden redolent with precious herbs and noble flowers-roses and lilies-which breathed forth a wondrous fragrance, that garden on which the true Solomon was accustomed to feast his eyes.

Love is born of faith, lives on hope, and dies of charity.