37 Quotes by Gordon Getty

I don’t think events in your life affect your music.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson’s poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

When my opera Plump Jack was performed in 1989, my first piano teacher sent me something that I’d composed when I was four. I remember I played it, and it still sounded like me. I’m the same composer I was then.

If you have more money than you need, you have to give it away. It’s a duty. I get to choose whom to sponsor, and I like to give to the areas that I know something about.

There is no change – I’m as deep or as shallow as I ever was. What’s new is on-the-job experience. This is what you gain with years.

I personally do not write highbrow music. If I do, it’s by accident.

I’ve had every advantage in the world, despite the 18 years of silence which were nobody’s fault but mine.

Ive managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me – music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. Its all about ideas.

I see only adaptations – not revolutions.