Stephen Hough Quotes - 9quotes.com

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I wanted to be a monk at some time in my life, or a priest, so there was a kind of reflex quite early on not to be attached to anything that might be taken away.
Written by Stephen Hough
I'd never thought about living in London until about 1999.
Written by Stephen Hough
I have had a place in New York in the musicians' district on the Upper West Side since 1986.
Written by Stephen Hough
If you are not living in the same area when you are looking for property, it is a nightmare because you come down for a day or two, have appointments to see places, and have to be able to make instant decisions before flying off to St. Louis or somewhere.
Written by Stephen Hough
I've always written - about music, art, things going on around the world. The danger is that it becomes too personal. I don't think people want it at that level of intimacy.
Written by Stephen Hough
My principal commitment is playing the piano. But I always loved words.
Written by Stephen Hough
Painting is just a hobby. I really don't think of it much more than that. But writing music and writing words... my life would feel as if it had a big hole if I took those away.
Written by Stephen Hough
I don't think of faith as something that's like a rock, that never changes. I think it's something that's very fluid, always changing.
Written by Stephen Hough
I wanted to be a disc jockey.
Written by Stephen Hough
I like the extras in life. Concentrating on serious things doesn't mean you can't also enjoy the lighter ones.
Written by Stephen Hough
There are many doors to the heart.
Written by Stephen Hough
I love my painting - it fills me with passion. But it's not something I expect anyone else to love.
Written by Stephen Hough
I can admire music where you feel the composer has everything organized and perfectly shaped, but it doesn't touch me. I like to feel that a composer is wounded, like all of us.
Written by Stephen Hough
There's certainly no doubt that commercialism has entered classical music to such a degree that almost no one seems to care anymore about the physical and mental health of the performer.
Written by Stephen Hough
Traveling the road can be quite tiresome.
Written by Stephen Hough
If you arrive at a concert ready to play your piece, that's not nearly good enough. You must have your music ready to the point where you can play it on a short rehearsal, after a long plane flight, on a strange piano, having had an unpleasant lunch, in an unfriendly atmosphere. You have to be so over-prepared that you can cope with anything.
Written by Stephen Hough
It's so easy for all the success in the world to suddenly end, and I'm quite aware of that.
Written by Stephen Hough
Once or twice, I've taken the Gideon Bible out of the drawer, opened it at random, and found myself stuck in the middle of a genealogical list. And that's when I thought: why not cherry-pick the best bits, passages that people can actually use?
Written by Stephen Hough
I've twice been on the point of giving up my performing career to train for the priesthood.
Written by Stephen Hough
To me, the heart of the ministry lies in being able to help deeply distressed people, not because of your own qualities but because you represent Christ.
Written by Stephen Hough
I once nodded off during one of my own concerts. While I was playing.
Written by Stephen Hough
All things of beauty can speak to us of God, and I'm very happy to listen to and be inspired by people of every religious background.
Written by Stephen Hough
I didn't want to look back in 10 or 20 years and say, 'Yes, I always wanted to write that piano sonata or that novel, but I never had time.'
Written by Stephen Hough
Schubert, Franck, and Liszt were all Roman Catholics who questioned or doubted or lived in different ways, and religion was certainly part of all their lives.
Written by Stephen Hough
It's very hard to come up with ideal situations... With different moods and the difficulties of traveling around, I often play my best under the worst conditions.
Written by Stephen Hough
Debussy is one of the few composers who actually created a new sound on the piano - or perhaps we should say a new smell, so perfumed are the vibrations which emanate from the instrument.
Written by Stephen Hough
No two composers were more totally at home in front of the piano than Debussy and Chopin, hands to keys to strings to sound waves to pen and paper in one perfect gesture of inspiration.
Written by Stephen Hough
They both changed the way we hear the sound of the piano, both of them inventors of sonority: Chopin took bel canto singing lines and reproduced them on the keyboard above richly upholstered counterpoint; Debussy somehow preserved vibrations in the air, blending their ephemeral magic into music that reaches far back into deep memory.
Written by Stephen Hough
My place in London is very small, so a piano would take up a third of the room. I leave home in the morning when I'm there and go to my studio. I close the door, and it's soundproof. There's no phone or TV or computer, and I can work uninterruptedly. That has been a huge advantage over the years.
Written by Stephen Hough
Why do people compose music? Why do people listen to music? When we go into a concert, we go into a place where we want to experience a sort of ecstasy, to come out of ourselves.
Written by Stephen Hough

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