A biography for Stephen Houghhasn’t been written yet.
“The daily glitter of skyscrapers competing with the stars is an unnecessary, unforgivable decadence.”
“Why do people compose music? Why do people listen to music? When we go into a concert, we go into a place where we want to experience a sort of ecstasy, to come out of ourselves.”
“I'd never thought about living in London until about 1999.”
“The things I do outside of playing the piano are done out of an inner necessity, not just because I want to try my hand at different things.”
“I love my painting - it fills me with passion. But it's not something I expect anyone else to love.”
“Silence is the necessary soil for any thought to flourish.”
“Once or twice, I've taken the Gideon Bible out of the drawer, opened it at random, and found myself stuck in the middle of a genealogical list. And that's when I thought: why not cherry-pick the best bits, passages that people can actually use?”
“In school, my favourite class was when we were given a subject for an essay on which we could freewheel. And poetry: I've always written it and loved the way words interact, in meaning and in sound.”
“Few occupations pass the solitary hours more fruitfully than the playing of a musical instrument.”
“I wanted to be a disc jockey.”
“I haven't studied theology in any systematic way. I don't think I'd find certain subjects - canon law, for instance - terribly interesting. But I'm always picking around and finding different things.”
“Most people spend their life trying to get away from Catholicism. Amazingly, I chose it.”
“Painting is just a hobby. I really don't think of it much more than that. But writing music and writing words... my life would feel as if it had a big hole if I took those away.”
“I would do a sort of violence to myself if I didn't express myself in the directly creative ways of writing, both words and music.”
“One of the things that touches me most when I play for an audience is that although we may be unable to communicate in words or have diametrically opposed views on hot-button issues, while the music sounds we can be at peace, we can be friends. The vibrations that fill an auditorium have no passports, and they unite ears when hearts may be divided.”
“I just found the piano so fascinating and wonderful, and I begged my parents to buy me one. In the end, they bought me a toy piano and eventually an upright piano, and I started lessons.”
“In superficial terms, to have an orchestral career is to be better than others, or at least to be chosen over others on that particular occasion; it is a form of survival.”
“Many people who don't like Rachmaninov's style consider the 'Rhapsody' his masterpiece. It's written fantastically well for orchestra and piano. He combines a lot of effervescence with a deep, Romantic spirit.”
“The Internet tempts us to think that because an email or a new website can be accessed in seconds that everything works at the same instant speed. Art is more like the growth of a plant. It needs time and space.”
“I once nodded off during one of my own concerts. While I was playing.”