Player Piano Quotes

• I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Want, Kind, Standing On The Edge

  FaceBook post by Kurt Vonnegut from Oct 01, 2012

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• I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

  William Gaddis

  Player, Piano Music, Piano Playing

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• And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Responsibility, Steps, Turns

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Player Piano”, p.312, Dial Press

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• Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.

  Tom Lehrer

  Life, Music, Play

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• Those who live by electronics die by electronics. Sic semper tyrannis.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Technology, Electronics, Live By

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Player Piano”, p.60, Dial Press

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• My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. To tell the truth, there's hardly a difference.

  Harry S. Truman

  Life, Music, Wisdom

  "The Wit & Wisdom of Harry Truman".

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• Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  People, Firsts, Bigs

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Player Piano”, p.84, Dial Press

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• Bad guys turned informer. Good guys didn't - no matter when, no matter what.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Guy, Matter, Informers

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Player Piano”, p.310, Dial Press

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• Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Science, Space, Progress

  The Sirens of Titan epigraph (1959)

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• I'm a doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit.....when you doctors figure out what you want, you'll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Doctors, Barns, Want

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• Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano.

  Frederic Chopin

  Life, Music, Piano

  Frederic Chopin (2013). “Chopin's Letters”, p.149, Courier Corporation

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• One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs.

  Robert Hughes

  Music, Tired, Player

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• Hope you don't think this is Billy Joel unplugged. I'm a piano player. I'm already unplugged.

  Billy Joel

  Music, Player, Thinking

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• The piano ain't got no wrong notes.

  Thelonious Monk

  Piano, Notes, Pianist

  "Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original". p. 444. Book by Robin Kelley, 2009.

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• If I hadn't been President of the United States, I probably would have ended up a piano player in a bawdy house.

  Harry S. Truman

  Player, Piano, House

  Harry S. Truman (1966). “Good old Harry: the wit and wisdom of Harry S. Truman”

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• To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

  James Whistler

  Music, Taken, Player

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.114, Courier Corporation

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• Most things don't stay the way they are very long.

  Richard Ford

  Long, Way, Take Nothing For Granted

  Richard Ford (2012). “Canada”, p.202, A&C Black

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• When you play, never mind who listens to you.

  Robert Schumann

  Music, Play, Piano

  Robert Schumann (1860). “Advice to Young Musicians”, p.10

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• The history of the music industry is inevitably also the story of the development of
  technology. From the player piano to the vinyl disc, from reel-to-reel tape to the cassette, from the CD to the digital download, these formats and devices changed not only the way music was consumed, but the very way artists created it.

  Edgar Bronfman, Jr.

  Artist, Technology, Player

  "Steve Jobs In Memoriam: Remembrances and Tributes". www.billboard.com. October 05, 2011.

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• Vonnegut's earliest novels hint strongly at his familiarity with Wiener's work, The Human Use of Human Beings, especially his first novel, Player Piano (1952), which shows his concern for the social implications of automation, the replacement of human beings with machines.

  David Porush

  Player, Piano, Firsts

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• I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll.

  John C. Reilly

  Song, Dad, Kids

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• My dad was a self-taught stride piano player. The myth is - I don't whether it's true or not - that he taught himself to play by watching a player piano.

  Mose Allison

  Dad, Player, Self

  Interview with Jason Heller, www.avclub.com. February 04, 2010.

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