Clarinet Quotes

Her father had been forced to cancel her clarinet lessons after the neighbors complained about the practicing. ~ Jeanne Birdsall

Clarinet n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments worse than a clarinet – two clarinets. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Tricky was a plain-faced man with a very handsome voice - a voice like the sound of a clarinet, at once liquid and penetrating, and lovely to listen to. ~ Sarah Waters

Many were starting to use computerized synthesizers & drum machines to produce an entirely new style of music. It was being punted by the critics that the guitar was old hat; I was reminded of the way my father & his clarinets were written off in the late Fifties. ~ Pete Townshend

The clarinet is a musical instrument the only thing worse than which is two. ~ Ambrose Bierce

The ability to play the clarinet is the ability to overcome the imperfections of the instrument. There's no such thing as a perfect clarinet, never was and never will be. ~ Jack Brymer

I came to that wooden marching band. I stopped and looked. There was a trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drum. Birds don't live alone, I told myself. They live in flocks. Like people. People are always in a group. Like that little wooden band. ~ Paul Fleischman

We decided to do some of Merle's things with modern instrumentation. We used a flute, a bass clarinet, a trumpet, a clarinet, drums, a guitar, vibes and a piano. ~ Tennessee Ernie Ford

I understood that if I wanted to work, the saxophone was the main instrument. The clarinet was what we call a double. ~ Lee Konitz

I was not a band geek, per say. But me and my two older sisters played instruments, so I would come home and my sister Dana would be playing the clarinet or playing the piano, and I would play the saxophone, my other sister would be singing, my mom would be singing. I was not afraid to be musical. That was not something that I thought was uncool. ~ Miles Teller

Barney Bigard's clarinet, ~ Haruki Murakami

I've brought you some things from home,' I said, gesturing at the bag on the floor. 'Some clothes and books – things like that.'
'Books – great! That'll make things easier. You know I can't read worth a damn right now!'
'There's also some music. Schubert's fifth, Mendelssohn's third, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, Mahler's fourth - '
'I would have preferred his sixth.'
'You're not well enough for his sixth'. ~ Gavin Extence

I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins. ~ Quincy Jones

The oboe sounds like a clarinet with a cold. ~ Victor Borge

You can sweat by not practicing or you can pick up your clarinet. There's good sweat and there's bad sweat. ~ Eric Maisel

That's the clarinet I used to use ... but it's just a piece of wood, you know, with holes in it and they put these clumsy keys on it and you're supposed to try to take that and manipulate it with throat muscles and chops ... and try to make something happen that never happened before. And when you do, you never forget it. It beats sex, it beats anything ... ~ Artie Shaw

sound," in a different way. Most instruments produce tones that are quite complex, each generating a series of overtones that contribute to our perception of their timbre and that exist in each note played on the instrument, defining its unique, haunting sound. A clarinet, for instance, produces a series of overtones in which some of ~ Bernie Krause

Members of your family might say they are working hard all day long, while you are off at school or clarinet lessons, but the only way to know this for sure is to follow them at a discreet distance. ~ Lemony Snicket

The low-tone clarinet moans. The door upstairs opens again. Stella slips down the rickety stairs in her robe. Her eyes are glistening with tears and her hair loose about her throat and shoulders. They stare at each other. Then they come together with low, animal moans. He falls to his knees on the steps and presses his face to her belly, curving a little with maternity. Her eyes go blind with tenderness as she catches his head and raises him level with her. He snatches the screen door open and lifts her off her feet and bears her into the dark flat. ~ Tennessee Williams

She's alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one's arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was. ~ Jerry Spinelli

When I first met Benny Goodman he wouldn't talk about anything but clarinets, mouthpieces, reeds, etc. When I tried to change the subject, he said 'But that's what we have in common. We both play clarinet.' I said, 'No, Benny, that's where we're different. You play clarinet, I play music.' ~ Artie Shaw

Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra - they'll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I'm too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I'm syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style. ~ Zadie Smith

I spend a lot of time idly. I go to sporting events, play my clarinet. I practise. But if you work every day, a certain amount on a steady basis, the work accumulates. ~ Woody Allen

I used to play flute and clarinet at school, and although I wasn't thinking about making a living or getting a pay cheque, I already knew I was going to play music all my life. ~ Nile Rodgers

I called Monsieur Menicucci, and he asked anxiously about my pipes. I told him they were holding up well. "That pleases me," he said, "because it is minus five degrees, the roads are perilous, and I am fifty-eight years old. I am staying at home." He paused, then added, "I shall play the clarinet. ~ Peter Mayle

I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre. ~ Samantha Barks

The whirligig featured a drummer, a trumpet player, a clarinetist, and a man with a trombone. It was a leap beyond the spouting whale, with more figures, a six-bladed propeller, and a much more complex system of rods and pivots that made the instruments dip and rise as if the musicians were marching. ~ Paul Fleischman

So the ideology was that: use sounds as instruments, as sounds on tape, without the causality. It was no longer a clarinet or a spring or a piano, but a sound with a form, a development, a life of its own. ~ Luc Ferrari

I've played the clarinet since I was a kid. I love to sing, but I'm not much of a singer. Let's say that when it comes to vocalizing, I have the soul of Billy Bigelow but the voice of Jigger Cragan. ~ Stephen Lang

Hey, hot cheeks!" A hand smacked my ass and I shrieked. Spinning around, I glared at Dan Ottoman, a blond, pimply, clarinet player from band. He leered back at me and winked. "Never took you for a player, girl," he said, trying to ooze charm but reminding me of a dirty Kermit the Frog. "Come down to band sometime. I've got a flute you can play ~ Julie Kagawa

I always imagined music trapped inside my clarinet, not trapped inside of me. But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks? ~ Jandy Nelson

I did all you can do with a clarinet. Any more would have been less. ~ Artie Shaw

Her voice was warm and husky as a clarinet, but not so sad as a clarinet: friendlier. When she laughed, it was like a clarinet blowing bubbles. ~ Katherine Catmull

Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late. ~ David Mitchell

No birdcall is the musical equal of a clarinet blown with panache. ~ Edward Hoagland

I just love crafting and shaping sounds. Actually, many of the sounds that I work with start off as organic instruments - guitar, piano, clarinet, etc. But I do love the rigidity of electronic drums. ~ Imogen Heap

It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way? ~ Richard Dawkins

begins with you walking towards a huge pit. The pit is on the other side of a precipice, which you cannot see over until you are right at its edge. Your death is awaiting you in that pit. You don't know what it looks like or sounds like or smells like. You don't know whether it will be good or bad. You just walk towards it. Your will is a clarinet and your footsteps are attended by all the violins. The closer you get to the pit, the more you begin to have the ~ Zadie Smith

The guitar is such an incredible instrument; it plays classical, flamenco, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, acid, blues. You'll never see a clarinet playing Black Sabbath. But you will see a guitar in a clarinet band playing rhythm. It is the most popular instrument in the world; it is the one everybody loves. ~ Randy Bachman

I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin ... If we'd had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good. ~ Sara Zarr

I was improvising before I was reading music. I was just trying to play things on the clarinet by ear. I think my ear is one of my greatest assets. ~ Pete Fountain

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos. ~ Gustav Mahler

Ted Lewis could make the clarinet talk. What it said was put me back in the case! ~ Eddie Condon

He then expounded a remarkable theory, which had occurred to him while he was playing the clarinet during one of the power cuts that the French electricity board arranges at regular intervals. Electricity, he said, is a matter of science and logic. Classical music is a matter of art and logic. Vous voyez? Already one sees a common factor. And when you listen to the disciplined and logical progression of some of Mozart's work, the conclusion is inescapable: Mozart would have made a formidable electrician. ~ Peter Mayle

And then yesterday…" He tosses the clarinet onto the bed. "Found out you belong to me." He points at me. "I own your ass ~ Jandy Nelson

When they were all ready, Halpern again counted them in, and the lyrical clarinet line floated over the strings and, Max felt, out of the open window and on, out and out over the hot, dusty July city like summer rain. ~ Lucy Beckett

A lot of the musicians asked me if when I hit my high-Cs on the records I had a clarinet take the notes. Some [thought] I had invented some kind of gadget so I could play high register. They weren't satisfied until they handed me a trumpet that they had with them and had me swing it. Then they cheered. ~ Louis Armstrong

The red-jacketed band stirred to life. The first musician raised his trumpet. The trombone dipped. The drumstick rose. Lea lowered her clarinet. It had been Brent's idea not to have their insturments rise and fall in unison. The staggered motion gave it a more exciting rhythm. ~ Paul Fleischman

[Analysis] has helped, but not as much as I've wanted. Years ago, I remember, I brought my clarinet into the repair shop, and the guy took two weeks and put new pads on and everything. When I went in, I said, 'Thank you, but am I going to sound better?' And he said, 'Yes, you will sound better, but not as much as you'd like to. ~ Woody Allen

I've been writing music since I was 9. I took harmony and counterpoint classes when I was studying the clarinet. So, I've been writing for an awfully long time. It just became part of everyday life. ~ Howard Shore

Tessie allowed Milton to press his clarinet to her skin and fill her body with music. At first it only tickled her. But after a while the notes spread deeper into her body. She felt the vibrations penetrate her muscles, pulsing in waves, until they rattled her bones and made her inner organs hum. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

My eyes are too big, my nose is too flat, my ears stick out, my mouth is too big and my face is too small ... my body is thin as a clarinet and my ankles are so skinny that I wear two pairs of bobby socks because I don't want people to see how thin they are. ~ Goldie Hawn