Carlisle Floyd Quotations

Most of the important composers in our country are clustered in the Northeast.

Anyone who creates something new or does something different artistically is going to be singled out.

I've never set out consciously to write American music. I don't know what that would be unless the obvious Appalachian folk references.

I was trying to do something that seemed very natural and easy but which bridged that gulf between the singing voice and the speaking voice.

I think anything that is expressed directly and as honestly as possible will last.

It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.

It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story.

Like any other composer of opera, I choose a subject not for polemical reasons, but because it contains vivid characters in highly charged dramatic situations.

Socially I never was an outsider. I have never thought of the conflict element before frankly, but perhaps it was wanting to belong, and at the same time wanting to retain one's own personality.

I had all the normal interests - I played basketball and I headed the school paper. But I also developed very early a great love for music and literature and the theater.