Any creator owes a debt to past creation.
Lukas Foss
2
Anybody can put things together that belong together. to put things together that don't go together, and make it work, that takes genius like Mozart's. Yet he is presented in the play Amadeus as a kind of silly boy whom the gods loved.
Lukas Foss
3
For years that may mean imitation. Then, one day, it is like a door opening, and a new thought comes in. Why not try this instead. Suddenly he is doing something original, almost in spite of himself.
Lukas Foss
4
Great music does not just make me feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy.
Lukas Foss
5
I don't dare postulate about science, but I know that it takes both emotion and intellect in order for art to happen.
Lukas Foss
6
I still do not know where the notes will come from when I accept a commission for a new work.
Lukas Foss
7
If one uses music that one does not really love, then one will not succeed in making it one's own.
Lukas Foss
8
In the nineteenth century the more grandiose word inspiration began to replace the word idea in the arts.
Lukas Foss
9
It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts.
Lukas Foss
10
It is the element I miss in electronic music - no performance, no loving immersion. Maybe that is why I was never particularly drawn to electronic music.
Lukas Foss
11
Most artists have experienced the creative block. We get stuck in our work. We beat our head against the wall: nothing. Sometimes, it is because we are trying something at the wrong time.
Lukas Foss
12
Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.
Lukas Foss
13
Personality is essential. It is in every work of art. When someone walks on stage for a performance and has charisma, everyone is convinced that he has personality. I find that charisma is merely a form of showmanship. Movie stars usually have it. A politician has to have it.
Lukas Foss
14
Since age seven, I've been composing and have never stopped composing, yet, the creative process is as elusive to me as it has ever been.
Lukas Foss
15
That is why the analogy of stealing does not work. With a thief, we want to know how much money he stole, and from whom. With the artist it is not how much he took and from whom, but what he did with it.
Lukas Foss
16
The best way to investigate the elusive phenomenon called the creative process may well be to target all the misconceptions, to explain what the creative process is not.
Lukas Foss
17
There is another interesting paradox here: by immersing ourselves in what we love, we find ourselves. We do not lose ourselves. One does not lose one's identity by falling in love.
Lukas Foss
18
To come to grips with creativity, I must ask creative, adventurous questions - the kind which, in all likelihood, cannot be answered.
Lukas Foss
19
To me, Mozart is our Shakespeare, the one who wrote the most dramatic, psychologically most baffling music. He combined ideas that no one else would have thought of putting together.
Lukas Foss
20
To understand Mozart's contradictory qualities would indeed be to understand genius.
Lukas Foss
When I went back to visit my native Berlin after World War II, I noticed that the only thing I really remembered from my childhood Berlin days is the shoe store.
Lukas Foss
24
Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique.
Lukas Foss
