Maestro Peter Goldsworthy Quotes

We must know when to move on. To search too long for perfection can also paralyse.

Only the second-rate never make mistakes.

I never hear you practice." He smiled: "Only those who are dirty need to wash.

Can I know that mine was a foolish, innocent world, a world of delusion and feeling and ridiculous dreams - a world of music - and still love it? Endlessly, effortlessly.

A constant flickering confetti of butterflies showered the town of Darwin. Designer insects, I think of them now: there was something enormously wasteful, extravagant even, about the profusion of patterns and shapes and brilliant colours.

I could set from memory a replica of the perfect Still Life she laid out on the table each morning: the carefully folded Advertiser, the two canary yellow hemispheres of grapefruit in their bowls, separated by a more richly yellowed cube of butter; the sky blue milk-jug and matching sugar bowl filled to the brim with their differently textured whitenesses; the pot of tea snug in its knitted navy blue cosy, the steam that rose invisibly from its spout suddenly rendered visible, swirling, where it entered the slanting morning light.

My affection for you does not depend on those small things.’ Affection? To hear him admit it, to actually utter words of love, however understated, astonished me.

At home, my mother dabbed at her brow with a wet flannel she kept in the fridge for that purpose.

Even our garden lawn—most domesticated of foliage—needed mowing again almost as soon as it was done … like some lush, green five o’clock shadow.

I smiled, but internally, unseen, using no visible facial muscles.