Protsenko Violin Quotes

So as not to see anything any more, I turned towards the wall, but alas, what was now facing me was that partition which used to serve us as a morning messenger, that partition which, as responsive as a violin in rendering every nuance of a feeling, reported so exactly to my grandmother my fear at once of waking her and, if she were already awake, of not being heard by her and so of her not coming, then immediately, like a second instrument taking up the melody, informing me of her coming and bidding me be calm. I dared not put out my hand to that wall, any more than to a piano on which my grandmother had been playing and which still vibrated from her touch. I knew that I might knock now, even louder, that nothing would wake her any more, that I should hear no response, that my grandmother would never come again. And I asked nothing more of God, if a paradise exists, than to be able, there, to knock on that wall with the three little raps which my grandmother would recognize among a thousand, and to which she would give those answering knocks which meant: "Don't fuss, little mouse, I know you're impatient, but I'm coming," and that he would let me stay with her throughout eternity, which would not be too long for the two of us. ~ Marcel Proust

[When asked if the voice is an instrument:] Yes, of course. Some are violins, some are fountain pens and some are stethoscopes. And others are just washboards. ~ Marilyn Vos Savant

Love is not love, without a violin playing goat. ~ Julia Roberts

Should I get my violin out? I feel this little chat of yours needs an accompanying rhapsody. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I first picked up a violin aged five - I just assumed everyone played. ~ Andre Rieu

When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you're telling a story. ~ Joshua Bell

And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross. ~ Leonard Cohen

A warm, ragged breath disturbed the hairs on my forehead, and my blood began pricking as I realized where exactly I had retreated: right into Mr. Braddock, our strange connection humming through the hairsbreadth of distance between our bodies, our faces. I froze, forcing myself to stop shoving against him further. Before I understood anything, a rough, large hand brushed my chin, my face tipped upwards, and his mouth caught mine, and suddenly my entire body was on fire. Whatever odd sensation had thrummed between us before was just the stroke of a violin bow to this clash of an orchestra. I felt the world pass between our lips, tasting champagne, hunger, and something indefinably darker, while his hand ignited sparks down my cheek to the nape of my neck. He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me closer, forcing that elusive essence to run deeper than my skin, deeper than my veins, until my very bones vibrated. ~ Tarun Shanker

Her friend is having a party, this Russian girl, they became friends because they have the same violin tutor. The first time I met the girl's mother, I think she was wearing something illegal, like the fur of an extinct animal, and she was trying to pretend that she did not have a Russian accent, being more British than the British! ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It was her grandfather who'd told her the tale of this particular violin, over and over, as if the telling could stave off loss, as if the weight and scope of human history were not found in books or in those mythic universities in Rome and Naples that no one in their village had ever seen but, rather, were encoded in objects like this one, a violin touched by hundreds of hands, loved, used, stroked, pressed, made to outlive its owners, storing their secrets and lies ~ Carolina De Robertis

No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conductive to attractiveness.
He is ponderously capricious.
Many of his casual opinions on people and scenery of this country are ludicrous.
A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning.
He is abnormal.
He is not a gentleman.
But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring it's author! ~ Vladimir Nabokov

With years a richer life begins, the spirit mellow: ripe age gives tones to violins, wine, and good fellows. ~ John Townsend Trowbridge

The statue was of a nude woman playing a slide trombone. It was entitles, enigmatically, Evelyn and Her Magic Violin. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I surreptitiously attempt to practice his I'm Here And I'm Listening And I'm The Best Damn Boyfriend Ever expression on my own face. He does it so well. But it must be possible, right? It's not like he's that crazy-talented.

He's about to start talking, but then he stops and stares at me.

"What?" I say, trying not to let my face muscles shift too much. This is damn tricky.

"You look like you're about to start playing the world's saddest song on its tiniest little violin," Arthur informs me. "And then hug a kitten, and paint a rainbow, and watch Titanic whilst weeping profusely. ~ Hannah Johnson

The best way would be education and kids and all that stuff and then education and working education comes through. Then I started a music school and the music school now teaches kids to play the violin and the viola. ~ A.R. Rahman

Rush-hour on the A rain. A blind man
staggers forth, his cane tapping lightly
own the aisle. He leans against the door,

raises a violin to chin, and says I'm sorry
to bother you, folks. But please. Just listen.
And it kills me, the word sorry. As if something like music

should be forgiven. He nuzzles into the wood like a lover,
inhales, and at the first slow stroke, the crescendo
seeps through our skin like warm water, we

who have nothing but destinations, who dream of light
but descend into the mouths of tunnels, searching.
Beads of sweat fall from his brow, making dark roses

on the instrument. His head swooning to each chord
exhaled through the hollow torso. The woman beside me
has put down her book, closed her eyes, the baby

has stopped crying, the cop has sat down, and I know
this train is too fast for dreaming, that these iron jaws
will always open to swallow a smile already lost.

How insufficient the memory, to fail before death.
how will hear these notes when the train slides
into the yard, the lights turned out, and the song

lingers with breaths rising from empty seats?
I know I am too human to praise what is fading.
But for now, I just want to listen as the train fills

completely with warm water, and we are all
swimming slowly toward the man with Mozart
flowing from his hands ~ Ocean Vuong

I wanted to play my violin and have my musical expression through the instrument. But then I was really young when I had my first opportunity to conduct. ~ Gustavo Dudamel

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Lie down there on the sofa and see if I can put you to sleep.
He took up his violin fom the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air - his own no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound until I found myself in dreamland, with the sweet face of Mary Morstan looking down upon me. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Just as we can play beautiful music only when the strings on the violin are in proper tension, so we can grow only when we are stretched from what we are to what we can be. There is no growth without tension. ~ J. Grant Howard

To be alone - the eternal refrain of life. It wasn't better or worse than anything else. One talked too much about it. One was always and never alone. A violin, suddenly - somewhere out of a twilight - in a garden on the hills around Budapest. The heavy scent of chestnuts. The wind. And dreams crouched on one's shoulders like young owls, their eyes becoming lighter in the dusk. A night that never became night. The hour when all women were beautiful. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around. ~ Louis Prima

But I did know that nobody ever asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, "Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?" I could have spoken up, "I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama's kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone." The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama's kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of music, and, since it would be good to have all my senses engaged, the taste of peach, perhaps, afterward. ~ Toni Morrison

The violin wasn't alive. It wasn't a baby or an animal, not living.
But that would be easier to believe if I hadn't felt it breathe and sing. ~ Jessica Martinez

God, as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched ... God will tutor us by trying us because He loves us, not because of indifference! ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Her eyes are beautiful, eloquent, and frightened, and seem to be telling the man: "You're a clumsy lover . . . You don't begin to understand me . . . I don't really know you, and you scare me . . . You sneer at everything I like . . . You lie so well! . . . You possess me completely, yet I can't trust you . . . If you knew what limpid springs you wall up within me because I fear you! 'What am I doing here at your side? Would that this music could free me of you forever! Or else that this violin would stop before I find out any more about you! You yearn for my undoing, not my happiness, and what is worst in me assures you of your victory. ~ Colette

I do basically what a conductor does with a baton, except I also play along with the orchestra. So I have to juggle the roles of playing the concertmaster; sometimes I drop the violin and wave my arms. ~ Joshua Bell

On the evenings when my parents held parties, the drawing-room mirrors multiplied to infinity the scintillations of a crystal chandelier. Mama would take her seat at the grand piano to accompany a lady dressed in a cloud of tulle who played the violin and a cousin who performed on a cello. I would crack between my teeth the candied shell of an artificial fruit, and a burst of light would illuminate my palate with a taste of blackcurrant or pineapple: all the colours, all the lights were mine, the gauzy scarves, the diamonds, the laces; I held the whole party in my mouth. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

I can't use logic concerning my feelings, my feelings demand musical notes, violins, guitar solos, the stomping of feet, poetic language, metaphors, poetic lines about birds or deserts or tree-crowded forests. ~ Noah Cicero

I know writers who write only when inspiration comes. How would Isaac Stern play if he played the violin only when he felt like it? He would be lousy. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother. ~ Anton Webern

He put it into drive and turned on the headlights. And there she was, standing in their white glow.
Holmes's skin was smoked black from the explosion, her hair flecked with snow. Her violin dangled from her fingers. She opened her mouth, and I saw her say my name.
I was out of the car in a heartbeat, and in the next, she was in my arms . . . "You're alive," I murmured, tucking my head over hers. "I'm so sorry. ~ Brittany Cavallaro

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

A young concert violinist was asked the secret of her success. She replied, "Planned neglect." Then she explained, "When I was in school, there were many things that demanded my time. When I went to my room after breakfast, I made my bed, straightened the room, dusted the floor, and did whatever else came to my attention. Then I hurried to my violin practice. I found I wasn't progressing as I thought I should, so I reversed things. Until my practice period was completed, I deliberately neglected everything else. That program of planned neglect, I believe, accounts for my success."1 ~ John C. Maxwell

She didn't own him. Had never owned him, she was only borrowing.
"I'm yours."
Her eyes flew open and he gazed at her without fear and without a lick of hesitancy.
"I've always been yours, Violin Girl. I've just been hoping you would take me. ~ Cari Quinn

Life is a guy trying to play a violin solo in public, while learning the music and his instrument at the same time. ~ Joseph Campbell

Well, I've been a musician my whole life. When I was two, I would sing the theme from Star Wars in my crib; my mom taped it for proof. Then, when I was five, I asked for a violin. No one knew why I would want one, but my wish was granted and I ended up a classically trained fiddler by age 12. The only problem with that was, when you're a classical violinist, everybody expects you to be satisfied with playing Tchaikovsky for the rest of your life, and saying you want to play jazz, rock, write songs, sing your songs, hook up your fiddle to a guitar amp, sleep with your 4-track recorder, mess around with synths, dress like Tinkerbell in combat boots, AND play Tchaikovsky is equivalent to spitting on the Pope. ~ Emilie Autumn

A guitar is a piece of wood, and if this piece is resonating in a period of 40 or 60 years, it kind of gets to know what it is after awhile ... the reason violinists play violins that are hundreds of years old. The wood learns to sing. ~ Dave Genn

So I cradle this average violin that knows
Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
The possibility of free declamation anchored
To a dull refrain ... ~ John Ashbery

I inherited a painting and a violin which turned out to be a Rembrandt and a Stradivarius. Unfortunately, Rembrandt made lousy violins and Stradivarius was a terrible painter. ~ Tommy Cooper