The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity. - Dmitri Shostakovich

For some reason, people think that music must tell us only about the pinnacles of the human spirit, or at least about highly romantic villains. Most people are average, neither black nor white. They're gray. A dirty shade of gray. And it's in that vague gray middle ground that the fundamental conflicts of our age take place.

What do you think of Puccini?
[ Britten: "I think his operas are dreadful." ]
No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas, but dreadful music.

People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence.