Playing Piano Quotes

• On television I feel like a man playing piano in a brothel; every now and again he solaces himself by playing 'Abide with Me' in the hope of edifying both the clients and the inmates

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Music, Men, Piano

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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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• Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcasm, Piano Music

  Impressions of America (1906). The Newark (Ohio) Daily Advocate, 20 Apr. 1883, describes an afterdinner speech made by Wilde in Paris about his experiences in the United States: "The brightest and best of the many stories he related was one to the effect that at a ball in Leadville he saw a notice over the piano which read: 'Please don't shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.' "

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• Music expresses that which cannot be put into words.

  Victor Hugo

  Music, Sound And Music, Musical Life

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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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• No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Music, Piano, Acoustics

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• 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

  Funny, Music, Girl

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• The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides.

  Artur Schnabel

  Funny, Music, Art

  Quoted in Chicago Daily News, 11 June 1958

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• The piano has been drinking, not me.

  Tom Waits

  Music, Drinking, Piano

  Song: The Piano Has Been Drinking, Album: Small Change

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

  Bob Hope

  Music, Play, Names

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• Play always as if in the presence of a master.

  Robert Schumann

  Play, Piano, Masters

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

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• The piano is a monster that screams when you touch its teeth.

  Andres Segovia

  Music, Piano, Monsters

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• I always make sure that the lid over the keyboard is open before I start to play.

  Artur Schnabel

  Music, Play, Piano

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• PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Funny, Music, Keys

  Ambrose Bierce (2009). “The Devil's Dictionary: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.224, ReadHowYouWant.com

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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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• The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air.

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Music, Mean, Air

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• The public is like a piano. You just have to know what keys to poke.

  Al Capp

  Music, Keys, Piano

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• 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

  Music, Names, Piano

  Jacques Barzun (1984). “Critical Questions: On Music and Letters, Culture and Biography, 1940-1980”, p.54, University of Chicago 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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• Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

  Frederic Chopin

  Music, Art, Simple

  "If Not God, Then What? Neuroscience, Aesthetics, and the Origins of the Transcendent". Book by Joshua Fost (p. 93), November 16, 2007.

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• Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.

  Joan Didion

  Music, Power, English Grammar

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 16, 2011

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• Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training.

  Jack Kornfield

  Perseverance, Play, Skills

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• I'm not very good at playing piano, so I usually hit chords with my right hand. And those chords came, and I was just singing a little bit.

  Mac DeMarco

  Hands, Piano, Singing

  Source: lagroupie.tumblr.com

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• 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

  Football, Creativity, Skills

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• I started playing piano when I was around four; thats my first passion.

  Condola Rashad

  Passion, Piano, Four

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