“Composing's not voluntary, you know. There's no choice, you're not free. You're landed with an idea and you have responsibility to that idea.”

— Harrison Birtwistle

In The Observer, April 14, 1996.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Composing's not voluntary, you know. There's no choice, you're not free. You're landed with an idea and you have respon…" by Harrison Birtwistle?

Harrison Birtwistle 4

British composer 1934

Related quotes

“If you're waiting to have good ideas before you have any ideas, you won't have many ideas.”

David Allen book Getting Things Done

Source: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (2001), Ch. 3

“You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“I don't think about technique. The ideas dictate everything. You have to be true to that or you're dead.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in "Dark Lens on America" in The New York Times Magazine (14 January 1990)

“They say that the truth will set you free
But then again, so will a lie…
It depends if you're trying to get to the promised land
Or if you're just trying to get by.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Promised Land
Song lyrics

“You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

Advice given by von Neumann to Richard Feynman as quoted in "Los Alamos from Below" in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985).

“Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

The Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program Oral History Interview http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/sj1.html, Advice for Future Entrepreneurs (20 April 1995)
1990s
Context: I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don't blame them. Its really tough and it consumes your life. If you've got a family and you're in the early days of a company, I can't imagine how one could do it. I'm sure its been done but its rough. Its pretty much an eighteen hour day job, seven days a week for awhile. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.