Piano Quotes

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

  Robert Schumann

  Music, Play, Mind

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

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• Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.
  What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.

  David Markson

  Play, Pieces, Schumann

  David Markson (1995). “Wittgenstein's mistress”, Dalkey Archive Pr

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• Grammar is a piano I play by ear.

  Joan Didion

  Play, Ears, Grammar

  Joan Didion (1984). “Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations”

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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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• Prayer is when you talk to God. Meditation is when you're listening. Playing the piano allows you to do both at the same time.

  Kelsey Grammer

  Music, Prayer, Meditation

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• The piano ain't got no wrong notes.

  Thelonious Monk

  Notes, Pianist, Piano Teachers

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

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• I never saw my grandfather because he had died before I was born, but I have good memories of my grandmother and of how she could play the piano at the old house.

  John Forbes Nash

  Memories, Grandmother, Play

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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, Acoustics, Mystery

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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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• 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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• I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Morning, Nine

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• I tour with a piano, actually. Luckily I am able to hire people that deal with it completely and magically a piano appears on stage and then magically disappears when I leave.

  Vanessa Carlton

  Journey, People, Able

  Interview with Spence D., www.ign.com. December 1, 2004.

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• Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.

  Jon Bon Jovi

  Art, Emotional, Guy

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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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• The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.

  Eddie Van Halen

  Goes On, Theory, Instruments

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• I'm Liberace without a piano.

  Paul Lynde

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• I've always wanted to smash a guitar over someone's head. You just can't do that with a piano.

  Elton John

  Guitar, Wanted

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don't quite know how to explain it but it's there. These can't be the only notes in the world, there's got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys.

  Marvin Gaye

  Keys, Trying, Cracks

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• I just sit down at the piano and rattle it off.

  Charlie Haden

  Inspiration

  "Charlie Haden Remembers Tomorrow". Interview With Mike Brannon, www.allaboutjazz.com. March 7, 2003.

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• I didn't want my last chapter to be the guy who sits at the piano and sings love songs.

  Richard Marx

  Song, Guy, Want

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• Chopin was the first piano composer who knew exactly how to make piano sound reach fullness, radiance and grandness. What to regard and what, by all means, to avoid. Chopin was keenly aware of the overtones and he did take care of them so artfully.

  Frederic Chopin

  Voice, Done, Schubert

  "Famous Pianists on Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann" by G. Henle Verlag, 2010.

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• I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours

  Jack Kerouac

  Memories, Writing, Winter

  Jack Kerouac (2012). “Tristessa (Annotated)”, p.38, BookBaby

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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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• O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors

  Frank O'Hara

  Enormous

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.216, Univ of California Press

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