Dmitri Shostakovich Quotes about Writing

I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Running, Writing, Long

We should think more about it, and accustom ourselves to the thought of death. We can't allow the fear of death to creep up on us unexpectedly. We have to make the fear familiar, and one way is to write about it. I don't think writing and thinking about death is characteristic only of old men. I think that if people began thinking about death sooner, they'd make fewer foolish mistakes.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Mistake, Struggle, Writing

The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Real, Writing, Genius

"Composers On Music: Eight Centuries of Writings". Book by Josiah Fisk, p. 355. In conversation with Isaac Glikman (July 4, 1966), January 30, 1997.

I don't think that either self-deprecation or self-aggrandizement is among the defining qualities of an artist... Beethoven could have been forgiven if his symphonies had gone to his head. Gretchaninoff could also be forgiven if his Dobrinya Nikititch went to his head. But neither one could be forgiven for writing a piece that was amoral, servile, the work of a flunky.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Writing, Artist, Thinking

"Composers on Music". Book edited by Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols, p. 354, letter to Isaac Glikman (February 26, 1960), 1997.