Harps Quotes - Page 5

• In fact, I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints - heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mummy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and a kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place - no fire and brimstone - but they just all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, “It's me, your father,” but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell.

  Keith Richards

  Father, Spring, Kissing

  "Life". Book by Keith Richards, October 26, 2010.

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• I love making people sing. I love group singing, sacred harp singing, choral singing, recordings of people singing sea shanties, work songs, prison songs - how people just sang to get through things.

  Matana Roberts

  Song, Sea, People

  Source: thequietus.com

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• You know I really don't like to think about the fact that I'm a girl in relation to the music industry. I was just a kid who wrote down thoughts to organize her brain and that turned into music, like any other writer or musician... so, I happen to be a girl. I don't consider that part of it really.. It may disappoint some feminists out there that I don't want to harp on women and men being equal.

  Lacey Mosley

  Girl, Kids, Men

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• When students are first at the Kerouac School we harp on Gertrude Stein's very basic poetic insistence that words are things . Not to invalidate your experience or all the great feelings you have, I tell them. Although poetry may be good for you, it's not therapy. You're making something with words which are visceral, muscular, active, not just markers of how you feel. And we have classes studying William Blake, Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Stein.

  Anne Waldman

  School, Class, Feelings

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• You know, the usual story. Once upon a time I was playing my harp by a spring when a fairy appeared out of nowhere, handed me a Beretta Model 92, and told me to shoot the white rabbit over there for target practice.

  Haruki Murakami

  Spring, Practice, White

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84: Books 1 and 2”, p.99, Random House

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• The language I have learnt these forty years, My native English, now I must forgo; And now my tongue's use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony.

  William Shakespeare

  Hands, Years, Tunes

  William Shakespeare (2013). “Second Tetralogy In Plain and Simple English: Includes Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V”, p.38, BookCaps Study Guides

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• The source of each accordant strain
  Lies deeper than the Poet's brain.
  First from the people's heart must spring
  The passions which he learns to sing;
  They are the wind, the harp is he,
  To voice their fitful melody,--
  The language of their varying fate,
  Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,--
  The talisman which holds inwrought
  The touchstone of the listener's thought;
  That penetrates each vain disguise,
  And brings his secret to his eyes.

  Bayard Taylor

  Lying, Hate, Spring

  Bayard Taylor (1866). “The Poems”, p.111

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• I don't harp on what I could change about the past, because I can't go back and change it. But definitely a lot of things I would change.

  Vanilla Ice

  Past, Because I Can, I Can

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• Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.

  Dylan Thomas

  Horse, Sunday, Past

  Dylan Thomas, Ellen Raskin (2003). “A Child's Christmas in Wales”, p.10, New Directions Publishing

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• I don't harp on the negative because if you do, then there's no progression. There's no forward movement. You got to always look on the bright side of things, and we are in control. Like, you have control over the choices you make.

  Taraji P. Henson

  Choices, Forward Movement, Sides

  "Taraji Henson Defies Odds On And Off Screen". "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, www.npr.org. February 19, 2009.

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• Now, after these things were done, the Pharaoh and his Queen drove through the hosts of Egypt in their golden chariot, and received the homage of the hosts ere they departed northwards for Thebes. At nightfall they returned again and sat side by side at the marriage feast, and once more Tua swept her harp of ivory and gold, and sang the ancient song of him who dared much for love, and won the prize.

  H. Rider Haggard

  Love, Song, Queens

  H. Rider Haggard (2012). “Morning Star”, p.295, The Floating Press

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• Soft as Memnon's harp at morning, To the inward ear devout, Touched by light, with heavenly warning Your transporting chords ring out. Every leaf in every nook, Every wave in every brook, Chanting with a solemn voice Minds us of our better choice.

  John Keble

  Morning, Voice, Light

  John Keble (1829). “The Christian year, thoughts in verse for the Sundays and holydays throughout the year [by J. Keble].”, p.52

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• Families of privilege and money would have harps in their parlors, and their cultured daughters would learn to play. It's got such a strange history. But that wasn't the context that I learned it in, so the inherent friction between that history and the more humanist folk-y history wasn't in my conscience at all.

  Joanna Newsom

  Daughter, Play, Privilege

  Interview with Andy Battaglia, www.avclub.com. October 13, 2004.

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• There's something fundamental to the harp that has retained its appeal my whole life. It's an instrument I am just in love with.

  Joanna Newsom

  Fundamentals, Instruments, Appeals

  Interview with Andy Battaglia, www.avclub.com. October 13, 2004.

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• Two touch the string,
  The harp is dumb.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Music, Two, Solitude

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.152, The Floating Press

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• I didn't sing for years and years, but I started playing harp when I was maybe 9 or 10. I had actually wanted to play for years leading up to that, but no teacher in our little town would take me on as a student, because I was too young.

  Joanna Newsom

  Teacher, Years, Play

  Interview with Andy Battaglia, www.avclub.com. October 13, 2004.

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• On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh, No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I, No harp like my own could so cheerily play, And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.

  Thomas Campbell

  Happiness, Dog, Play

  'The Harper' (1799)

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• So, you figure they won't notice you're back?" sneered the marquis. "Just, 'oh look, there's another angel, here, grab a harp and on with the hosannas'?

  Neil Gaiman

  Angel, Looks, Figures

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• Free thyself from the mighty attraction-
  The maddening wine of love, the charm of sex.
  Break the harp! Forward, with the ocean's cry!. . .

  Swami Vivekananda

  Sex, Ocean, Wine

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1894, Manonmani Publishers

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• What happens when all the parts of childhood are soldered down, when the young no longer have the time or space to play in their family's garden, cycle home in the dark with the stars and moon illuminating their route, walk down through the woods to the river, lie on their backs on hot July days in the long grass, or watch cockleburs, lit by morning sun, like bumblees quivering on harp wires? What then?

  Richard Louv

  Nature, Morning, Stars

  Richard Louv (2013). “Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”, p.81, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Whatever Juice this sky will pour this gaping parched old throat will drain; What time the Harper harps I'll dance: 'tis He, not I, who shall complain. Meal may be scarce and cakes be burnt, yet I weep not nor even scold: The sun is food enough for me, 't is large, and has not yet grown cold.

  Ridgely Torrence

  Gratitude, Sky, Cake

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• If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
  And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
  Would you hear my voice come through the music
  Would you hold it near as it were your own?

  Robert Hunter

  Sunshine, Voice, Gold

  Robert Hunter, David G. Dodd (2005). “The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics: The Collected Lyrics of Robert Hunter and John Barlow, Lyrics to All Original Songs, with Selected Traditional and Cover Songs”, p.126, Simon and Schuster

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• My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has ... coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to.

  Joanna Newsom

  Song, Ideas, Voice

  Sydney Morning Herald, October 10, 2005.

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• I didn't really know a lot of the history when I was younger. I didn't realize that the harp is coded in such a specific way in musical circles. It's kind of this society instrument because of its history as a young woman's parlor instrument.

  Joanna Newsom

  Circles, Musical, Way

  Interview with Andy Battaglia, www.avclub.com. October 13, 2004.

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• O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Life

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “The Writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Poems”

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