Piano Quotes - Page 28

• One of the loveliest things about being grown up is the knowledge that never again will I have to go through the miserable business of performing in Mrs. Smedley's Annual Piano Recital at McKinleyville's First Presbyterian Church.

  Peg Bracken

  Church, Firsts, Miserable

  Peg Bracken (1982). “A Window Over the Sink”, Avon Books

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• There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that one sometimes needs help with moving the piano.

  Rebecca West

  Sex, Moving, Men

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• A smart girl is one who knows how to play tennis, golf, piano -- and dumb.

  Marilyn Monroe

  Girl, Smart, Golf

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• I never like to play for myself, and that is why I don't own a grand piano. To play for yourself is like looking at yourself in a mirror. I like to practice; that is to work at a task. But to play there must be an audience. New things happen when you play for an audience. You don't know what will occur. You make discoveries with the music, and it is always the first time. It is an exchange, a communion.

  Hephzibah Menuhin

  Music, Play, Mirrors

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• For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.

  Pablo Casals

  Past, Thinking, Years

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• I've watched other people singing, I've become a much better singer. I've become a singer that plays the piano instead of a piano player that sings.

  Elton John

  Player, People, Singing

  "A Q&A With Elton John". Billboard Interview, www.billboard.com. November 16, 2004.

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• I've always been a lover of classical music ever since I was an early teenager I suppose. I remember the very first piece of classical music that grabbed me was I bought an LP of Daniel Barenboim performing Mozart's piano concertos and I would have been about 14 or 15 at the time and I remember I played it over and over again.

  George Brandis

  Teenager, Pieces, Firsts

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• There wasn't a lot of music in the home when I was growing up. We didn't have a piano or anything like that but my grandmother, had been a well-known piano teacher.

  George Brandis

  Teacher, Growing Up, Home

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• The music I listened to when I was a kid was Sonny Boy Williams and Pinetop Perkins. He was the one who had the most influence on my playing. I saw him through a window playing piano and I thought it was unbelievable somebody could move their fingers that fast. And this is how I got interested in piano.

  Ike Turner

  Moving, Kids, Boys

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• If the souls of lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few to which nought but the refined and exquisite sadness of a violin could do justice. Many might be likened unto common pianos, jangling and out of tune, and some to the feeble piping of a penny whistle, and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin-pot.

  Miles Franklin

  Couple, Sadness, Justice

  Miles Franklin (2009). “My Brilliant Career”, p.456, The Floating Press

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• The work-life balance is a harsh reality for so many women, who are forced every day to make impossible choices. Do they take their kids to the doctor...and risk getting fired? Do they work weekends so they can afford to send their kids to better childcare...even though it means even less time with their families? Do they take another shift at work, so they can pay for piano lessons for their kids...even though it means they have to stop volunteering for the PTA? It just shouldn't be this difficult to raise healthy families.

  Michelle Obama

  Mean, Kids, Weekend

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• writing had to take the form of journalism. Not for me the Shangri-la of fiction. The rewards, if any, would have been too little and too late, the bailiffs were at the door. ... Two large bailiffs, they were, who visited frequently and smiled like grand pianos, the only really reliable men in my life. They told me what they were going to do and if they did it, woe was me.

  Jill Tweedie

  Writing, Men, Two

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• Slap some keys on her and we'll have a piano.

  Darryl F. Zanuck

  Music, Keys, Slap

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• The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own.

  Bradley Joseph

  Joy, Despair, Mood

  Album liner on "Grand Piano (Narada Anniversary Collection)", 1997.

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• I'm learning to play piano. And also the musical saw.

  Rachel Trachtenburg

  Play, Musical, Saws

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• Writing is like anything - baseball playing, piano playing, sewing, hammering nails. The more you work on it, the better you get. But it seems to take a longer time to get better at writing than hammering nails.

  Betsy Byars

  Baseball, Writing, Get Better

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• rain began to beat at the narrow lattice windows in the stop-and-start manner of an untalented child practicing scales at the piano.

  Dorothy Cannell

  Children, Rain, Window

  Dorothy Cannell (2013). “God Save the Queen!”, p.13, Belgrave House

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• I came from a folk-family background. Although we weren't really the all-singing, all-dancing-around-the-piano folkies or anything like that, there is that idea of singing and playing with your parents and your family and your cousins.

  Teddy Thompson

  Cousin, Ideas, Dancing

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• I didn't know what I was gonna get the first time I sat down at a piano, but I loved it and it became my playmate for life.

  Buffy Sainte-Marie

  Firsts, First Time, Sat

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I'm told I was acting in school plays when I was a tiny little boy at the age of three, so they must have seen something then. And even when I was practicing piano eight hours a day, I was still doing school plays.

  Christian McKay

  School, Boys, Eight

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• My mother playing the violin and my father and grandfather playing the piano, classical stuff.

  Pete Seeger

  Mother, Father, Violin

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

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• My mother wanted me to learn how to read music. She'd given fiddles to my two older brothers, but they'd rebelled. I came along and my father said, "Oh, let Peter enjoy himself." What she did was leave musical instruments all around the house. Whistles, marimbas, squeeze boxes, a piano and organ. By age six or seven, I could bang out a simple tune on almost anything. I developed a good ear, so I didn't learn to read music until I taught myself at age eighteen, 'cause I was hearing so many good songs I couldn't possibly remember them all.

  Pete Seeger

  Mother, Song, Brother

  Source: www.wholeearth.com

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• Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.

  Mick Jagger

  Song, Writing, Guitar

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• I believe I inherited my sense of music from my father. My father was an ear piano player; he could just hear something and play it.

  Richie Havens

  Father, Believe, Player

  "Folk singer Richie Havens dead at 72" by Alan Duke, www.cnn.com. April 23, 2013.

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• My little brother and I took piano lessons at a young age and played music together later on in life just to play around at home until we decided to make a record. Eventually we started having more and more songs.

  Josephine de La Baume

  Song, Brother, Home

  "Josephine de la Baume on Mark & "Dreamcore" Style". Interview with Lauren Houssin, www.elle.com. May 16, 2011.

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