Verdi Quotes

Listen, I wanted to say, I don't need your judgment, okay? I have enough to deal with without you contributing, so can we just get on with this so I can get out of here?
But I couldn't form the words. Dr. Johnson viewed me as a child, and somehow, under his contemptuous gaze, I had regressed to one. I was frightened and shy, and it was all I could do to answer his questions and count the seconds until the end of the visit. ~ Jessica Verdi

I'm about to wake Brianna up to see if she knows anything when Carolyn comes in. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail and she's wearing workout clothes - sports bra, cropped leggins, running shoes.
For a moment, I'm speechless. She's sweaty, her face is bright red from exertion, and she's slightly out of breath. Her ab muscles pulse as she takes a swig from her water bottle. She smiles at me, her lips wet from the water or sweat or both, and something strange happen-I feel like a hand has clenched around my insides and is tugging, urging me toward her, and I suddenly feel very warm. Hot, even. Like I've been hit with a fever. I have to remind myself to breathe.
She's even more beautiful now than she was yesterday.
And here I am, in this ridiculous pink sack, probably with major bedhead. ~ Jessica Verdi

See, that's the problem with getting hit by lightning. You get burned. ~ Jessica Verdi

When is it too late to say it's still early for the Cubs? Try now. Their magic number is 1998, at least until it becomes 1999, but in lieu of a present, they offer you a future. ~ Bob Verdi

There's something about New York City that gives you permission to just be. There's no need for pretense, no need for masks. You can be real, without risk. The buildings are your protectors, the streets are your tethers. The people ... you will never see them again. Even when they're right in front of you, you don't see them. Not really. Just as they don't really see you. New York is beautifully anonymous. ~ Jessica Verdi

I'd never wanted to punch anyone as badly as I wanted to punch her right in her perfectly little surgically-altered nose. ~ Jessica Verdi

When I was young, my mother [folk singer Kate McGarrigle] brought home this recording of Verdi's Requiem and we listened to it from top to bottom. By the end of it, I was a completely different person. It was literally a requiem mass for my former self. I was about 12 or 13. The Requiem just totally hooked into what I was going through emotionally - discovering my sexuality right at the time when AIDS was devastating my community and dealing with intense parental situations. ~ Rufus Wainwright

This is my Italy, she thought. The power and beauty of the antiquities, the detailed frescos, the imposing statuaries carved of milk white granite, Don Martinelli's hammered gold chalice, the glorious tones of the music, the Italy of Puccini and Verdi, Caruso and Toscanini, not the Italy of the shattered spirits in Hoboken and the drunken, desperate Anna Buffa. This was the Italy that fed her soul, where hope was restored and broken hearts were mended in the hands of great artists. ~ Adriana Trigiani

So you're a real person! I always thought you were a legendary figure, like unicorns or Giuseppe Verdi. ~ Lemony Snicket

Why does everything have to suck so bad? Even when you think it's getting better, it's not. Life's building up suckiness, getting ready to hit you again, at the worst possible moment. ~ Jessica Verdi

Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned. I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

...this is your life. It's not your mom's. You have to do what makes you happy too ~ Jessica Verdi

Verdi was a genius. Sometimes in his operas, the strings in the orchestra, particularly the cellos, play in such a way that it is as if you are hearing the very heartbeat of Verdi. ~ Vincent B. "Chip" LoCoco

It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way you can do that is - like Verdi said - working with a file, every day, little by little, until the orchestra's collective qualities emerge. ~ James Levine

Stupid criticism and still more stupid praise. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

If New Horizons is, like Kaylee said, the tool God gave me to create a better life, I'm pretty sure I'm using it wrong. ~ Jessica Verdi

I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

Through care taken over trends, the desire to be novel and affectation knowledge, we repudiate our art, our instinct, our own way of doing things; it is absurd and stupid ~ Giuseppe Verdi

I love music, especially classical like Verdi; it's a great way to relax. ~ David Suchet

Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel. ~ Jonny Greenwood

I want you to know how I feel about my Italian heritage, so I'd like to say a few words in Italian: Verdi, Pavarotti, DiMaggio, Valentino, De Niro, Giuliani ... ~ Susan Lucci

Leaping and looping with his little striped friends, verdi laughed and said "I may be big and very green, but I'm still me! ~ Janell Cannon

To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

What if the only thing that's standing between us right now is our fear? ~ Jessica Verdi

It heartens me to think of Verdi who composed thundering operas in his eighties; Michelangelo who did fine work in his ninetieth year, and Titian, who painted better than ever in his one hundredth. ~ James A. Michener

Our mistake, you see, was to write interminable large operas, which had to fill an entire evening. And now along comes someone with a one or two-act opera without all that pompous nonsense - that was a happy reform. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

I don't know how long it's been since I've been gone, but you have to move on. If not today, then someday soon.
I love you, Ryden, I will always love you, but I'm not here anymore. ~ Jessica Verdi

Even Stravinsky does not evoke the same public affection as Verdi. ~ Charles Rosen

You may have the universe if I may have Italy ~ Giuseppe Verdi

I am an arrogant and impatient listener, but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like, I am convinced that it is my own fault. Verdi is one of those composers. ~ Benjamin Britten

It is better to invert reality than to copy it. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

A man like Verdi must write like Verdi. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

You can't pray the gay away. ~ Jessica Verdi

The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

It may be a good thing to copy reality; but to invent reality is much, much better. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

Opera once was an important social instrument - especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi, people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television. ~ Luciano Berio

The artist must yield himself to his own inspiraton, and if he has a true talent, no one knows and feels better than he what suits him. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

Now I know thinking is not your strong suit, but look on the bright side, at least you'll have this little puzzler to keep you occupied for the next hour or so. ~ Jessica Verdi

Show pity I beg you ...
We have today been struck down by fortune
But tomorrow it may be your own turn to die. ~ Giuseppe Verdi

If there's anything worth any risk at all, it's got to be love, right? ~ Jessica Verdi

Sounds like a pretty miserable existence to me, to have to keep denying who you are every second of your life. ~ Jessica Verdi

I didn't want this man touching me in those places. It wasn't that he was being inappropriate, it was just more that he obviously didn't view me as a person, let alone a scared person with actual feelings. He just saw me as yet another scientific specimen there for his own experimenting. I squeezed my eyes shut, cringing the entire time. ~ Jessica Verdi

I am under no illusion that I will ever be the greatest opera composer in the world, with Wagner and Verdi and Strauss before me. I think my work could fit very nicely into musicals, though. ~ Rufus Wainwright