Violin Quotes - Page 6

• Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in everything write the word 'finis' in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent; we must draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. The Wise man is he who knows when and how to stop.

  Victor Hugo

  Wise, Passion, Writing

  Victor Hugo (1994). “Les Miserables Volume One”, p.92, Wordsworth Editions

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• The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. He was playing his life...He played that which he would never play again.

  Elie Wiesel

  Play, Soul, Darkness

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• Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.

  Alain de Botton

  Practice, Contentment, Easy

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• A violin is nothing more than a piece of wood and a dead cat. But it's a piece of technology. So when computers came along, in the '70s, I suddenly thought, hang on a second, this is interesting. These things can become an instrument. So I just became very interested in them, and started, playing with electronics.

  Hans Zimmer

  Cat, Technology, Interesting

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

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• It seems to be the special peculiarity of human beings that they reflect: they think about thinking and know that they know. This, like other feedback systems, may lead to vicious circles and confusions if improperly managed, but self-awareness makes human experience resonant. It imparts that simultaneous "echo" to all that we think and feel as the box of a violin reverberates with the sound of the strings. It gives depth and volume to what would otherwise be shallow and flat.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Echoes, Self

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• Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night!

  Hermann Hesse

  Dream, Lying, Night

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.36, Macmillan

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• The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Music, Order, Play

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• I don't think there is any end to translucence. It's an endless journey, rather like playing the violin.

  Arjuna Ardagh

  Journey, Thinking, Ends

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• 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

  Play, Guy, Trying

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• Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound. It's not trying to replace a band, per se. It's become a completely different thing. And it's not just simply an effect. It's just a very surprisingly intuitive thing.

  Andrew Bird

  Singing, Trying, Sound

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• To regard one's immortality as an exchange of matter is as strange as predicting the future of a violin case once the expensive violin it held has broken and lost its worth.

  Anton Chekhov

  Broken, Matter, Strange

  "Ward No. 6". Short stories by Anton Chekhov, 1892.

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• I'm just a one-instrument player. I have been known to play a blender, but I basically play - just play the violin.

  Itzhak Perlman

  Player, Blenders, Instruments

  Source: www.npr.org

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• If you play something well, I don't care what it is. I mean, I don't play an electric [violin] - I tried. It's actually interesting.

  Itzhak Perlman

  Mean, Play, Interesting

  "Violinist Itzhak Perlman Gets Quizzed On Ron Perlman". "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!", www.npr.org. March 29, 2014.

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• I've had it for about 13 years, and I don't see any reason to change, I find that the violin just keeps responding really well. It changes itself every year; it ages, it goes through all these different environmental changes, and of course, the travelling...It develops on its own, just as any performer does. It's a very stable instrument, so I can rely on it, but at the same time it always shows me a different side of things than I expect.

  Hilary Hahn

  Years, Environmental, Age

  "Violinist.com interview with Hilary Hahn". Interview with Laurie Niles, www.violinist.com. October 22, 2007.

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• 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

  Mother, Pieces, Orchestra

  Letter to Alban Berg, "Anton von Webern" by Malcolm Hayes, (p. 71), 1995.

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• I started skiing around the same time as I began playing the piano, at around four, before moving to the violin at five.

  Vanessa Mae

  Moving, Piano, Four

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• The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk around my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.

  Anthony Burgess

  Wise, Brother, Wine

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• It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.

  E. M. Forster

  Beautiful, Sports, Eye

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.361, Delphi Classics

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• No matter how often you knock at nature's door, she won't answer in words you can understand--for Nature is dumb. She'll vibrate and moan like a violin, but you mustn't expect a song.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Song, Nature, Doors

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• Some pianists seem to really remember the keys and not so much the notes they play. They want to learn until it's a physical habit that can be replicated. For pianists, this is much more of a problem than for other instruments, like the violin, where you actually have to think of the pitch.

  Carlo Grante

  Thinking, Keys, Play

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• Charlie Chaplin is the greatest artist of the 20th century. He takes me from laughter to tears in seconds. And he was one of the very first funny men. It's like the original violins were made in Cremona and there's never been any better since. Sometimes the best come right off the bat.

  Emo Philips

  Laughter, Artist, Men

  Interview with Sanjiv Bhattacharya, www.theguardian.com. July 1, 2006.

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• It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.

  Elie Wiesel

  Dark, Past, Opposites

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• I use to think that the friction was a bad thing. Everything is to ease pain in our society; pain is very much the enemy. And I don't think that's true. Tension is a good thing. To be pulled tight: that's the only way you can make a proper noise on the guitar or violin.

  Jon Foreman

  Pain, Thinking, Guitar

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• When I was five I had violin lessons.

  Randy Bachman

  Lessons, Genocide, Five

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• Walk my way and a thousand violins begin to play, or it might be the sound of your hello.

  Johnny Mathis

  Romantic, Play, Sound

  Song: Misty The Very Best Of Johnny Mathis, Album: Heavenly

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