Piano Playing Quotes

When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano. ~ Bob Hope

PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by pressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience. ~ Ambrose Bierce

When I did get signed and I was going around letting people know what I was about, that's exactly how I did it: me on the piano, playing a couple of songs I'd written and talking to the people in between. That's how I got my performance chops up. ~ Alicia Keys

I have these big piano-playing hands. I feel like I should be picking potatoes. ~ Sandra Bullock

She always paid attention to fingers rather than faces because they told so much more. People remembered to guard their faces. They forgot their hands. Her own were small, though strong and supple from all the hours of piano playing, but what use was that now? For the first time she understood what real danger does to the human mind, as flat white fear froze the coils of her brain. ~ Kate Furnivall

Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience. ~ Jon Bon Jovi

One story sums up their magical quality. On June 30th 1968, at the height of Apple optimism, Paul McCartney and Derek Taylor were driving back to London from Saltaire, Yorkshire, where they had been recording the Black Dyke Mills Band on a song of Paul's called 'Thingummybob'. They were in Bedfordshire. Let's pick a village on the map and pay it a visit, said Beatle Paul. He found a village called Harrold, which they found quite hilarious, and turned off the A5. Harrold turned out to be a picture-perfect village, with a picture-perfect pub at its heart. The pub was closed, but when the villagers saw there was a Beatle at the door they opened it up. Soon the whole village was in the pub, listening to Paul McCartney on the pub piano playing the as-yet-unreleased 'Hey Jude'. Every Harrold resident danced and sang along, and the revelry went on until 3 a.m. It was beautiful, perfect, spontaneous and full of love. Harrold. You couldn't make it up. ~ Bob Stanley

I had returned to piano-playing and music lessons when I had turned seventy-five (having written about how even older people can learn new skills, I thought it was time to take my own advice). ~ Oliver Sacks

The piano is the social instrument par excellence ... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment. ~ Jacques Barzun

When I was twelve, my appendix burst, and as they were wheeling my ass into the operating room, I asked the doctor, "How will this affect my piano playing?" and he said, "Don't worry, you'll still be able to play the piano," and I said, "Wow! I wasn't able to before!" And then they gassed me. ~ John Scalzi

In college I had a weekend gig at a restaurant, a solo thing that was the best practice I could have ever had. That's where I learned to coordinate my singing and my piano playing. ~ Norah Jones

This world is not a platform where you will hear Thalberg-piano-playing. It is a piano manufactory, where are dust and shavings and boards, and saws and files and rasps and sandpapers. The perfect instrument and the music will be hereafter. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

But sleep didn't come. She could hear Jace's soft piano playing through the walls, but that wasn't what was keeping her awake. She was thinking of Simon, leaving for a house that no longer felt like home to him, of the despair in Jace's voice as he said 'I want to hate you', and of Magnus, not telling Jace the truth: that Alec did not want Jace to know about his relationship because he was still in love with him. She thought of the satisfaction it would have brought Magnus to say the words out loud, to acknowledge what the truth was, and the fact that he hadn't said them - had let Alec go on lying and pretending - because that was what Alec wanted, and Magnus cared about Alec enough to give him that. Maybe it was true what the Seelie Queen had said, after all: Love made you a liar. ~ Cassandra Clare

One encounters very capable fathers abashed by their piano-playing daughters. Three measures of Schumann make them red with embarrassment. ~ Alfred Doblin

I never had much interest in the piano until I realized that every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left and another to my right. ~ Duke Ellington

Everyone asks me if piano had helped me in football. I guess improvisation and creativity helps on the field, but that's a reach. The two skills are just so different. And, by the way, I get more nervous playing piano. ~ Joey Harrington

I play piano all the time. I'm always at my piano, playing music. ~ Brian Wilson

The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth. ~ Andres Segovia

One more point must be made with regard to the general conditions of learning an art. One does not begin to learn an art directly, but indirectly, as it were. One must learn a great number of other - and often seemingly disconnected things - before one starts with the art itself. An apprentice in carpentry begins by learning how to plane wood; an apprentice in the art of piano playing begins by practicing scales; an apprentice in the Zen art of archery begins by doing breathing exercises. 1 If one wants to become a master in any art, one's whole life must be devoted to it, or at least related to it. One's own person becomes an instrument in the practice of the art, and must be kept fit, according to the specific functions it has to fulfill. With regard to the art of loving, this means that anyone who aspires to become a master in this art must begin by practicing discipline, concentration and patience throughout every phase of his life. ~ Erich Fromm

I write a lot of more instrumental music than I do vocal music. It's because I come out of a background of playing piano and then playing sax for a number of years. I kind of got into rock backwards. A lot of guys go into rock and then get sick of it and then go into something else. I came the other way, so I've always just had a lot more stuff lying around. ~ Tom Verlaine

I didn't decide to start to playing piano until I was almost 13 years old when my friends and I thought it would be fun to start a band. None of us actually played any instruments so the band never quite got off the ground, BUT it made me go home and ask my parents for piano lessons. That was really the beginning for me. Once I started, it was all I wanted to do. ~ Andrew Hollander

Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat 'King' Cole as a performer - not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I'd get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met. ~ Bruce Forsyth

I'm quite proud of my piano playing. Robin's never played a note on the piano at our recording sessions. I just wish I could be appreciated musically now. ~ Maurice Gibb

I got to sing solo in the junior choir when I was 10 or 11 and won a competition, and my sister's piano playing improved to a certain level. One time my sister and I worked together. The first song we ever sang in High School was Rags to Riches by Tony Bennett. ~ Gordon Lightfoot

I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth. ~ Martin Gore

I was a piano player. I love piano playing. I just love all music. ~ Maceo Parker

I didn't start playing piano until I was 18. ~ George Winston

I insist on a Steinway for my recordings, my concerts and my home. It is the only piano I want to hear my music played on. ~ Michel Legrand

If I'm going to Hell, I'm going there playing the piano. ~ Jerry Lee Lewis

Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards. ~ Vladimir Horowitz

I grew up painting and playing piano so when I was a little kid I thought I was going to be an artist or a painter but my mom had me taking piano lessons for about 10-12 years as a young kid. ~ Mike Shinoda

My entire life, I've always known that I wanted to be a performer, but I didn't know exactly how, where or when. I never learned or studied the craft, formally. I grew up doing martial arts and playing piano. But, something inside of me always said that I was going to do this, as far back as I can remember. ~ Laz Alonso

I've been playing piano my whole life, but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made, really. Try to imagine if you'd loved paintings your whole life but had never painted one. My aspiration now is just to understand. ~ Caio Fonseca

Playing acoustic guitar is like having sex with your clothes on. I mean you know how to do it, but it's more difficult. ~ Dave Mustaine

September morn Do you remember how we danced that night away Two lovers playing scenes from some romantic play September morning still can make me feel this way. ~ Neil Diamond

H.A.P.P.Y How are people playing you? My Hand, three of a kind. Today I fold. bartender another drink please... make that a double. ~ Jevon Scott

Jude [Law] is really good at playing an obsessive. He has a very watchable quality when he's on a quest for something. ~ Steven Soderbergh

...it was never the sun overhead that brightened my days. It was the son playing on my lap. ~ Kevin Alan Milne

The radio is playing jazz, and I listen to the sound of the trumpet playing a solo until I become that sound. ~ Joy Harjo

All Citizens United did was to level the playing field for corporate speech. We now have, I think, the most free and open system we've had in modern times. ~ Mitch McConnell

Whatever part I'm playing, I always carry with me something that's been used by an illustrious predecessor. I'm a great believer in a touching of hands. I have daggers belonging to Henry Irving and Sarah Siddons. ~ Donald Sinden

Yes, I'm hungry. Horny, too! The thought of feeding from you is a most delectable idea and it's playing havoc with my brain as well as other parts of my body.
He sat up and scooted closer to me ... ~ Tish Thawer

I grew up in the Boys & Girls Club. That's where I really started playing all sports, and that's why I'm a big advocate for the work they do. ~ Frank Thomas

People have to understand one thing: at the age of 18, I arrived at a dream club like Manchester United. It was a dream come true. But, even at that moment, I was thinking about playing in England for some years and then going to play in Spain. Even at that time I was thinking that way, and I always gave 100% everything. ~ Cristiano Ronaldo

What the British seem to like are television historians and naturalists, not public intellectuals. You can't help feeling that's because one supplies narrative and the other supplies facts, and the British are traditionally empiricists so they/we have a resistance to theory and to theoreticians playing too prominent a role in public life. ~ Will Self

There have been heroes here, and saints and martyrs and I want you to know that. Because that is the truth even if no one remembers it. To look at the lace, it's just a cluster of houses strung along a few roads, and a little row of brick buildings with stores in them, and a grain elevator and a water tower with Gilead written on its side, and the post office and the schools and the playing fields and the old train station, which is pretty well gone to weeds now. But what must Galilee have looks like? You can't tell so much from the appearance of a place. ~ Marilynne Robinson

When the other girls had given up their Barbies, I was still playing with mine in secret. ~ Cheri Oteri

Maybe we need to quit playing defense and start playing offense. Maybe we need to quit letting our circumstances get between us and God and let God get between us and our circumstances. Maybe we need to stop talking to God about our problem and start talking to our problem about God. ~ Mark Batterson

I was blessed to work with The Jazz Messengers when the two piano players were Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea. ~ Chuck Mangione

I don't want to be romantic, but one of the most important things is to have happy buildings ... it's like having a family with a lot of children. ~ Renzo Piano

Regardless of what you play, the biggest thing is keeping the feel going. ~ Wes Montgomery

I'm an HSP to the core. I avoid violent imagery (I abandoned reading Elaine Aron's The Highly Sensitive Person on my first try because - in typical HSP fashion - I couldn't handle the frequent references to sexual abuse). I'm very empathetic, and I feel as though my head will explode when two people try to talk to me at the same time. I have difficulty making dinner while the counter is cluttered with the morning's dishes. I lose my mind when someone is singing while the radio is playing a different song. Watching the news makes me want to assume the fetal position and never get up. ~ Anne Bogel

I like to play cards. I'm not very good, because I don't want to calculate, I just play by instinct. But I've learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker. ~ Jack Ma

When you're playing this bad of a character, it's obviously not reality for someone who's not living that life. ~ Michael Rapaport

Life's got to be a game we are playing, so stand back and check out your moves. ~ Jay Woodman

My career has suddenly started to be the one that I'd always wanted, not in terms of level of success, but in terms of - and this is what I've been banging on about - playing different parts in different media. ~ Rufus Sewell

In the woods it was not so much that it was quiet as that the few sounds were loud and distinct, not the orchestra tuning-up of the city but individual grace notes. Birdcalls broken into pieces like a piano exercise, a tree branch snapping sharp and then swishing down and thump on the ground, the hiss of water coming off the mountain. ~ Anna Quindlen

My background playing soccer gave me a natural advantage over many of the American-born players. ~ Hakeem Olajuwon

The danger of speaking about life exclusively in terms of problem and solution is that we are thus tempted to overlook the limitations of this detective game and the very existence of the initial arbitrary rules that makes the playing of it possible. The rule is to exclude from the terms of the problem everything that the solution cannot solve. It is diverting and useful to know that, for the chemist, a man is made up of a few pennyworth of salt, sugar, iron, and what not, together with an intolerable deal of water. But we must not assert that 'man is, in fact, nothing but' these things, or suppose that the solution of the pennyworths in the water will produce a complete and final solution of man. . . .

It was said by Kronecker, the mathematician: 'God made the integers; all else is the work of man.' Man can table the integers and arrange them into problems that he can solve in the terms in which they are set. But before the inscrutable mystery of the integers themselves he is helpless, unless he calls upon that tri-unity in himself that is made in the image of God, and can include and create the integers. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

I'm a drummer. I've been playing since I was three. I was in college bands when I was in elementary school: you'd see all these older kids and then this little kid behind the drums creating this big sound. ~ AraabMuzik

It is a mistake to think of these men as visionary dreamers, playing around at Philadelphia with abstract conceptions of political theory, pulling a whole scheme of government out of the air like a rabbit out of a hat. True, many of them had read and studied enough about the science of politics to put the average statesman of today to shame. But political science was to them an extremely practical topic of discussion, dealing with the extremely practical business of running a government
not, as today, a branch of higher learning reserved for the use of graduate students. ~ Fred Rodell

It was my dream playing for the Montreal Canadiens - it was my dad's team. ~ Guy Lafleur

Many people in this world are merely playing a role, unaware that there is an Invisible Hand guiding them. ~ Paulo Coelho

So how are the wedding plans progressing?" Richard asked, once they were out of the village.
"They aren't." Breckenridge heard his clipped tones, heard the irritation beneath. Didn't care if Richard did, too. "She's taken some nitwit notion into her head that I don't need to marry her, that she's going to go off and manage an orphanage in the country, or some such thing, so her social ruination doesn't matter."
"Ah." Richard nodded sagely. "She's playing stubborn."
"Playing?" Breckenridge shot him an irate look. "She's the definition of the word. I've already tried talking her around. Twice."
"I hate to break it to you, old son, but it won't be your honeyed words that change her mind."
Breckenridge snorted. "I've tried that, too-so far all that's gained me is..." An even deeper sense of being irrevocably linked to her.
Richard glanced at him curiously. "What?"
Breckenridge pulled a face, growled, "Damned if I know."
Richard grinned. "Well, whatever it takes, just console yourself with the thought that the end result will be worth it."
Breckenridge cast Richard a sharp glance, saw the open contentment in his face. Felt compelled to ask, "So what did you have to do?"
Richard's smile deepened. "The same thing we've all have to do-prostrate ourselves at their dainty feet, swear undying love, and mean it. ~ Stephanie Laurens

Cheating, especially the mental kind - because when we desire something we shouldn't, the ravenous hunger for it consumes each fantasy playing through our immoral brains - can rot a relationship, sending its skeleton to the graveyard of "what should have been. ~ Gail McHugh

I like playing smart, savvy, sexy women
because it's so not me! ~ Amanda Tapping

I'm not angry, I'm not an angry person, but I do sometimes like playing with the perception of anger, as in pretending that I'm more angry than I actually am, and sometimes it works quite well. ~ Calvin Harris

Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Teraza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and a lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below. ~ Milan Kundera

In her experience, there were only two kinds of guys: the ones into sports and the ones into video gaming. It seemed guys had to be obsessed with something, whether it was watching a game or playing in it or keeping some weird collection related to it. ~ Victoria Kahler

Enjoy the movie. I hear the guy gets the girl" I said, my tone bold and flirtatious.
"Which guy?" She laughed, playing along. I could hear her smile through the phone. It felt good to make her smile. Really good.
I paused before answering, "The one who deserves her. ~ Melissa Brown

What did you do?" "Nothing. We're just playing a game, she and I, and I'm winning. ~ Kiersten Fay

When I was younger, I'd go to the Museum of Television and Radio in New York and watch this beautiful clip of Billie Holiday playing with a bassist, a pianist and Gerry Mulligan, who was a friend of mine, on baritone sax. At one point, she looks over at Gerry, and they just smile. When those moments happen, it's just lovely. ~ Patti Scialfa

It appears to be a re-run of a bad movie. [Iraqi President Saddam Hussein] is delaying. He's deceiving. He's asking for time. He's playing hide-and-seek with inspectors. One thing is for certain - he's not disarming. ~ George W. Bush

Max: Okay. One day a little boy is sitting on the floor of his living room, playing with some toy trucks. Voom!He shoots one across the carpet, but it goes too far, to the other side of the sofa. And then miraculously, it shoots right back. Surprised, the little boy peers around the sofa to find a girl around his age with a very attractive bowl cut, building a giant Lego castle. She asks him if he wants to play, before popping one of the Legos in her mouth, informing him that if he's hungry, they are made out of chocolate. And the boy had never felt happy in his whole life. They build the most incredible chocolate castle, with dragons and soldiers and moat made of milk. And then they fell asleep side by side. The boy wakes up in his living room, and even though there is no castle or no little girl, he still feels just as happy. And he knows he will see her again.

Alice: Was that me?

Max: That was you. The first time we met. ~ Lucy Keating

In London, she'd overheard more than one matron decrying what they considered Esme Byron's inappropriate eccentricities, aghast that she was allowed so much personal freedom and the ability to voice opinions they considered unsuitable for an unmarried young woman barely out of the schoolroom. But her family always stood by her, proud of her artistic talent and uniformly deaf to the complaints of any critics who might say she needed a firmer hand.
'What must Ned and Mama be thinking now?' Were they regretting that they had not listened to those critics? Wishing they'd kept a tighter rein on her activities rather than letting her venture out as she chose?
But she would have gone mad being constrained and confined the way she knew most girls her age were. She could never have been borne the suffocating restrictions, the smothering tedium of being expected to go everywhere with a chaperone in tow, or worse, being cooped up inside doing embroidery or playing the pianoforte. ~ Tracy Anne Warren

I skipped school one day to see Dizzy Gillespie, and that's where I met Coltrane. Coltrane and Jimmy Heath just joined the band, and I brought my trumpet, and he was sitting at the piano downstairs waiting to join Dizzy's band. He had his saxophone across his lap, and he looked at me and he said, 'You want to play?' ~ Donald Byrd

I care about being able to play. If you're playing with integrity in the music, then that's what matters. But it wasn't that great for me because it was kinda like going back into the old times without the guy. ~ Bill Kreutzmann

Monk's reasons for dancing during a performance: "I get tired sitting down at the piano! That way I can dig the rhythm better. ~ Thelonious Monk

I loved playing the guitar and I knew I was pretty good at it, so that's what I wanted to do with my life. ~ Ace Frehley

All children want to go to space. Earth only offers parents wailing about overdraft notices and evening news playing in an empty den. Dead pets too. Childhood is a rot. And so they look up and see stars shiver, ancient information only just now arriving, because that is the only place left to look, and they yearn. ~ David Connerley Nahm

Papi was a man split in two, / playing a game against himself. // But the problem with that / is that in order to win, you also always lose. ~ Elizabeth Acevedo

Yes, I have been studying piano since I was six. Classical, jazz, compositional, Broadway, everything. I just love it all. ~ Janel Parrish