The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.

- Carlisle Floyd

We don't have access to a national forum that we had in those days, through the news magazines which were the television news of the time. It's very disturbing to me that we've sort of been pushed to the corners.

- Carlisle Floyd

There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is distinctly superior in whatever way.

- 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

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

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

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 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

You can't possibly predict what will last or not. But once you attempt to write for the ages, you're doomed.

- Carlisle Floyd

When I've seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can't tell you what that phenomenon is.

- Carlisle Floyd

Opera is given so little attention in the national press.

- Carlisle Floyd

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

- Carlisle Floyd

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

- Carlisle Floyd

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

- 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

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

- 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

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

What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.

- Carlisle Floyd

There's the Bacon society, which is fostered by his fourth wife Helen Bacon, but I don't know what kind of performances his music gets. He wrote symphonic music and some chorale music.

- Carlisle Floyd