A Quote by Ludwig van Beethoven
There are and always will be thousands of princes, but there is only one Beethoven!
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What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
A reporter meets interesting people. If he endures, he will get to know princes and presidents, popes and paupers, prostitutes and panderers. And always, in the back of his head, there will be a dozen men and women he will never meet. And always, he will feel the poorer for it.
There's always blood on the carpet when I play Beethoven at the piano. I hate playing the piano! And it's so hard to fight for Beethoven's soul! But that's what I have to do!
In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the pricesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.
When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.
The wrong one will start saying things like "withdraw with honor." We've heard phrases like that before, and they led to thousands and thousands of deaths. Democrats always want to look tough.
Sadly I write in my quiet room, alone as I have always been, alone as I will always be. And I wonder if my apparently negligible voice might not embody the essence of thousands of voices, the longing for self expression of thousands of lives, the patience of millions of souls resigned like my own to their daily lot, their useless dreams, and their hopeless hopes.
And now, in honour of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven's death, I would like to play 'Clear the Saloon', er, 'Clair de Lune', by Debussy. I don't play Beethoven so well, but I play Debussy very badly, and Beethoven would have liked that.
Between 1958 and 1963, I sold about 40 million records - to the shock of my mother and father because I was always playing Beethoven. But I bought my mother a mink stole. She was very happy, and she said, 'I think this is better than Beethoven.'
Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought before and expressing it somehow. It could be with art, a sculpture, music or even in science. The difference, however, between scientific creativity and any other kind of creativity, is that no matter how long you wait, no one else will ever compose "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony" except for Beethoven. No matter what you do, no one else will paint Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Only Van Gogh could do that because it came from his creativity.
There will be a new industry, and we are just now in the beginning. I will predict that in twelve or fifteen years there will be tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people, that fly and see that black sky.
You have to find your own shtick. A Picasso always looks like Picasso painted it. Hemingway always sounds like Hemingway. A Beethoven symphony always sounds like a Beethoven symphony. Part of being a master is learning how to sing in nobody else's voice but your own.
Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.
While men compete in war, there will be warriors. While there are warriors, there will be princes among warriors. Among the princes will be kings, and among the kings an emperor.
It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.
It was the saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents, we should find all slaves to come from princes, and all princes from slaves; and fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy in a long series of revolutions; beside, for a man to spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies to furnish out an epitaph, is below a wise man's business.
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