“Dying was a great career move for him.”
—Kevin Bazzana, Wondrous Strange:
The Life and Art of Glenn Gould
- “I gather my inner resources from the outdoors.”
- “Behind every silver lining there’s a cloud.”
- “My ability to work varies inversely with the niceness of the weather.”
- “From the time I was about 12, I was forced to do a complete analysis and to memorize any work I was going to play before actually going to the piano and playing it. When you are compelled to do that, you get a kind of X-ray view of the score, much stronger than any tactile imagery the piano might create for you.”
- “I happen to believe that competition rather than money is the root of all evil.”
- On Tureck: “Her records were the first evidence that one did not fight alone. It was playing of such uprightness, to put it into the moral sphere. There was such a sense of repose that had nothing to do with languor, but rather with a moral rectitude in the liturgical sense.”
- “I love Tristan. I was fifteen when I first heard it, and wept.”
- “The greatest of all teachers is the tape recorder.”
- “You owe nothing to your public.”
- GG on Strauss: “I’ve always been addicted to his music the way some people are addicted to chocolate sundaes. I find it absolutely irresistible. “
- “Isolation is the one sure way to human happiness.”
- “I see nothing wrong in making a performance of out of two hundred splices, as long as the desirable result is there.”
- “It’s true that I’ve driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but on the other hand, I’ve stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it.”
- “Music is my ecstasy.”
- When asked what one must do to be a professional artist: “You must give up everything else.”
- “One does not play the piano with one’s fingers. One plays the piano with one’s mind.”
- “One of these times I’ll write my autobiography, which will certainly be fiction.”
