America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn't put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist.
Carlisle Floyd

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

I find it enormously valuable to be sure that that the pacing is what I think it is and that the scenes have the shape I think they have musically and dramatically.
Carlisle Floyd

I found a certain kind of music congenial to me; it never occurred to me to write music that was academically acceptable.
Carlisle Floyd

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.
Carlisle Floyd

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

I was encouraged by my mother and, to a lesser extent, by my father.
Carlisle Floyd

I was interested in what was really going on in Salem at that time, and I resolved to investigate this seemingly unorthodox treatment of the people and the period.
Carlisle Floyd

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

If an American audience is given a serious musical theater piece that is well produced, dramatically gripping and wonderfully acted, they'll respond to it.
Carlisle Floyd


If I felt that one of my operas did not come off I would certainly say so.
Carlisle Floyd

If something is successful with the audience, it's automatically suspect; the reverse is to say that not to reach audiences is the greatest compliment an artist can receive!
Carlisle Floyd

It seems to me opera is just as relevant as an expressive art as anything else.
Carlisle Floyd

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.
Carlisle Floyd

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.
Carlisle Floyd

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.
Carlisle Floyd

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

Opera is given so little attention in the national press.
Carlisle Floyd

Our most intimate contact with civilizations long since dust has been through the art which has survived them.
Carlisle Floyd

People in very high places suddenly fall, and we are always surprised because we don't factor in the basic element that they're humans and, therefore, they are flawed and have weaknesses.
Carlisle Floyd