Quotes & Sayings About Accordion

A new study found that women think men holding a guitar are more attractive, even if they are not playing it. In a related story, guys with an accordion will die alone. — Jimmy Fallon

I cut my teeth playing rock songs on the accordion when I was a teenager and my friends always thought that was extremely amusing. I think that was the genesis of my polka medleys, because every rock song I played on the accordion just sounded like a polka and my friends thought it was funny. So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day. — Al Yankovic

The mention of money did intrigue him, since he did prefer wine, women, and song to beer, whores, and accordion music. — Pip Ballantine

I knew nothing of the real life of a musician, but I seemed to see myself standing in front of great crowds of people, playing my accordion. — Lawrence Welk

Growing up in Louisiana, my grandmother gave me an accordion because of our Cajun heritage. What ended up happening was I started learning about more instruments, so I just kind of went that route. Music's really all I've ever done. — Hunter Hayes

That is why I need you to take into account the elasticity of time, its ability to expand or contract like an accordion regardless of clocks. I am sure this is something you will have experienced frequently in your own lives, depending on which side of the bathroom door you found yourselves. In Andrew's case, time expanded in his mind, creating an eternity out of a few seconds. I am going to describe the scene from that perspective, and therefore ask you not to blame my inept storytelling for the discrepancies you will no doubt perceive between the events and their correlation in time. pg. 61 — Felix J. Palma

She didn't dare to look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging onto her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside her. This, it said, is your accordion. — Markus Zusak

A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old ... I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all that racket.
Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not. — Jorge Luis Borges

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion. — Carl Sandburg

Time plays like an accordion in the way it can stretch out and compress itself in a thousand melodic ways. Months on end may pass blindingly in a quick series of chords, open-shut, together-apart; and then a single melancholy week may seem like a year's pining, one long unfolding note. — Julia Glass

My first dream was to travel. I was attracted to different places, different colors of skin, different food. When I was 18 in 1977, I went to Europe with my accordion and discovered the pleasure of entertaining people. — Guy Laliberte

I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion. — Nicolas Cage

Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places. This one was sent out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. — Markus Zusak

Forget it once. *** Knock, knock! Who's there? Accordion! Accordion who? Accordion to the TV, it's going to rain tomorrow. *** Yo momma so stupid she tried to commit suicide by jumping off a building but got lost on the way down. *** Teacher: Why is the Mississippi such an unusual river? Student: Because it has four eyes and can't see! *** Teacher: "Why are you on the floor?" Johnny: "Because you said to do this math problem without tables!" *** How do you make an elephant float? Take one elephant, two tons of ice cream, and one ton of soda. Blend. *** In — Various

A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't. — Tom Waits

Music helps set a romantic mood. Imagine her surprise when you say, "We don't need a stereo - I have an accordion." — Martin Mull

To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing. — Henry Miller

Papa grinned and pointed at the girl. "Book, sandpaper, pencil," he ordered her, "and accordion!" once she was already gone. Soon, they were on Himmel Street, carrying the words, the music, the washing. — Markus Zusak

Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, she had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which sometimes played old Pashto songs were played, time stretched and contracted depending on his absence or presence. — Khaled Hosseini

I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse ...
To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
It is to you, Tania, that I am singing. I wish that I could sing better, more melodiously, but then perhaps you would never have consented to listen to me. You have heard the others sing and they have left you cold. They sang too beautifully, or not beautifully enough. — Henry Miller

She didn't see him watching as he played, having no idea that Hans Hubermann's accordion was a story. In the times ahead, that story would arrive at 33 Himmel Street in the early hours of morning, wearing ruffled shoulders and a shivering jacket. It would carry a suitcase, a book, and two questions. A story. Story after story. Story within story. — Markus Zusak

He was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, "I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come." Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places. This one was sent out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested. There was an itchy lung for a last cigarette and an immense, magnetic pull toward the basement, for the girl who was his daughter and was writing a book down there that he hoped to read one day. — Markus Zusak

The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib. — Robert Burchfield

My sense of self has expanded and contracted like a schizophrenic accordion. I have questioned everything, and I have felt nothing. I have told the universe to f**k off, and I have fallen down weeping at its compassionate response. — Sera J. Beak

You know frankly, going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind. — Jed Babbin

Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes. — Markus Zusak

He wanted to play accordion on something of mine and I said you can play accordion, but I want you to play piano and organ on some stuff. He came over a couple times a week for two weeks and gave me therapy as to whether I should do The Thorns or not. — Matthew Sweet

Nine-year-old Laila rose from bed, as she did most mornings, hungry for the sight of her friend Tariq. This morning, however, she knew there would be no Tariq sighting.
- How long will you be gone? - She'd asked when Tariq had told her that his parents were
taking him south, to the city of Ghazni, to visit his paternal uncle.
- Thirteen days
- Thirteen days?
- It's not so long. You're making a face, Laila.
- I am not.
- You're not going to cry, are you?
- I am not going to cry! Not over you. Not in a thousand years.
She'd kicked at his shin, not his artificial but his real one, and he'd playfully whacked
the back of her head.
Thirteen days. Almost two weeks. And, just five days in, Laila had learned a fundamental truth about time: Like the accordion on which Tariq's father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq's absence or presence. — Khaled Hosseini

Doorway. In Palestine, at least, no one would burst into tears at the sight of her. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Tedi traced her name into the dirt and remembered Mr. Loederman's wife, Lena, an old-fashioned woman who wore crocheted collars. They had had a grown son, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson. All dead, she realized. She should have hugged him back. The accordion raced up a scale. Young voices — Anita Diamant

I once threw myself down a flight of stairs rather than face even one moment with a milliner, at whose shop I quit working after discovering the sinister truth about her berets, only to find that the paramedic who repaired my fractured arm was a man who had fired me from a job playing accordion in his orchestra after only two and half performances of a certain opera. — Lemony Snicket

Ansel Adams rattled around the Southwest with his battered truck and his view camera, which looked like a giant accordion with a lens attached to it. — Joe McNally

The world is a staircase," hissed the accordion maker in the darkness. "Some go up and some come down. We must ascend. — Annie Proulx

My father bought me a little cardboard accordion, and when I was three I got this little machine. — Toots Thielemans

that I realized that the blind old man who played the accordion on Main Street wasn't there anymore. He was gone. — R.J. Palacio

The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The observation of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should reveal things of which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of which we have been conscious plus imagination. p. 919 — Wallace Stevens

Who's Heinz and what's an accordion?"
-Spader — D.J. MacHale

It was August 1988, I was an 80s person, contemporaneous with Duran Duran and The Cure, not that fiddle and accordion music grandad listened to in the days when he trudged up the hill in the dusk with a friend to court grandma and her sisters. I didn't belong here, with all of my heart I felt that. It didn't help that I knew the forest was actually an 80s forest and the mountains actually 80s mountains. So what was I doing here? My plan had been to write. But I couldn't, I was all on my own and lonely to the depths of my soul. — Karl Ove Knausgard

I was never encouraged to do it and I played the accordion, which I hated. I wish I had taken piano because I definitely would have written more songs of my own, but I didn't. — Connie Francis

Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect. — Steve Rushin

My mother told stories - of their life in the war and how she'd played the accordion in the air-raid shelter and it had got rid of the rats. Apparently rats like violins and pianos but they can't stand the accordion ... — Jeanette Winterson

The Edith Head Trio, I would say, would be even less of a musical career than playing the accordion, particularly because I played the accordion in The Edith Head Trio. I'm very impressed by your Googling. The Edith Head Trio and another band, Tzamboni, were two bands I was in after college that played at tiny clubs to little acclaim. Our Gypsy tango version of "When Doves Cry" was our biggest hit.But we were not destined for greatness. — Daniel Handler

The French always make our sort happy because, like us, they know how to love, they're just as good at playing the accordion, and they've made a real art of their inability to bake proper bread. — Sasa Stanisic

If you want to turn on your boyfriend, get naked and strap on an accordion. — Sheryl Crow

Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones.
Papa was an accordion!
But his bellows were all empty.
Nothing went in and nothing came out. — Markus Zusak

Ive realized that even more that what is beautiful about the accordion is to play with a single finger sometimes, with a very pure, very pointed sound that gives a lot of poetry and emotion. — Richard Galliano

My parents had a sidewalk cafe: every Sunday there was an accordion player and apparently I went through the motions, squeezing a shoebox. One of the regulars in 'the cafe said to my father: "I think you should get your son an accordion-that's what he's trying to do, with that shoebox." So they got me a little cardboard diatonic accordion-I still have it. I started to play the National Anthem, and things like that. It seems I was musically gifted-but my parents just never pushed in that direction. — Toots Thielemans

I once made the mistake of writing a story with David Corbett. The man smoked me. He can delineate the character and personality of an accordion in three strokes. I didn't even know accordions had character. This act of generosity and wisdom from a very good writer will help anyone who is staring at a blank page, any day, any time. Highly recommended. — Luis Alberto Urrea

I had different bands. I played with the Acoustic Warriors for the most part, without girl singers. It was the same kind of sound, acoustic guitar, bass, with violin and sometimes accordion, and the guys would sing, that kind of thing. — Dan Hicks

Walk into the living room (which doubled as the Hubermanns' bedroom), pull the accordion — Markus Zusak

The accordion and the whores and the retching,' he said. 'That's our music. — Paula McLain

Ford used to come to work in a big car with two Admiral's flags, on each side of the car. His assistant would be there with his accordion, playing, Hail to the Chief. — Richard Widmark

I've never had a musical career. So I think it's been unaffected. I play the accordion. In terms of thinking of it as a musical career, I think it's sort of like calling yourself an astronaut because you have a shiny suit. — Daniel Handler

An accordion player posted himself at the curb and played La Paloma. The rug peddlers appeared with silken Keshans over their shoulders. A boy sold pistachios at the tables. It looked as it had always looked - until the newspaper boys came. The papers were almost torn from their hands and a few seconds later the terrace, with all the unfolded papers, appeared as if buried under a swarm of huge, white, bloodless moths sitting on their victims greedily, with noiseless flapping wings. — Erich Maria Remarque

My youngest boy went mad. He sits drooling on the porch, trying to play the cat like an accordion. He's been scratched some. — H.P. Lovecraft

I play, like, 12 instruments. Guitar, piano, harmonica, African drums ... I'm working on mastering the accordion. — Lucas Grabeel

And I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later - a vision in the book thief herself - that as she knelt next to Hans Hubermann, she watched him stand and play the accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Liesel Meminger one last time as the sky was slowly taken away from her. — Markus Zusak

I played trombone for 10 minutes, and then I was in an accordion band in school for even less. — Colm Meaney

It was as if his eye were an ear and a crackle went through it each time he shot a look at the accordion ...
The notes fell, biting and sharp; it seemed the tooth that bit was hollowed with pain. — Annie Proulx

It was difficult to get into my friends' rock bands when I was a teenager. They somehow didn't see the need for an accordion player. That's when I realized that I had to find my own path in life. — Al Yankovic

Conversation didn't seem necessary when I put the accordion down and swung some young lady around the floor. — Lawrence Welk

Do you know that my very first experience as a composer was a 'Concerto for Accordion?' — Alfred Schnittke

My mother brought home the accordion in 1942. I was fascinated and wanted to learn to play it. Some of my music has a relationship to dance styles - The Well and the Gentle or The Wanderer for example. — Pauline Oliveros

[W]hen the coyote falls, he gets up and brushes himself off; it's preservation of dignity. He's humiliated, and it worries him when he ends up looking like an accordion. A coyote isn't much, but it's better than being an accordion. — Chuck Jones

My first instrument was an accordion. Growing up in Louisiana, my grandmother gave me an accordion because of our Cajun heritage. — Hunter Hayes

I've found that music allows years to fold like an accordion over each other, so I guess you don't feel the passage of time as much. — Amy Grant

I'm a pretty good drummer. I'm pretty good at guitar, bass and piano. I can play accordion; I'm not virtuoso. I've played cello before. My sister played it, and I know how to play it, but I'm not the best. Violin is kind of the same thing. — Brendon Urie

I've always said the bass just happens to be the crayon I picked out of the box. I'd still be drawing the same pictures ... should I have picked trumpet or accordion or guitar, whatever it may be. The sounds in my head are still the same. — Les Claypool

Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion. — Norman Schwarzkopf

Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin. — Ambrose Bierce

Words cannot express quite a lot of feelings, whereas a noise or tone or drone or sound, an accordion falling down a staircase, can somehow capture an emotion much better. — John Lydon

Welcome to Hell. Here's your accordion. — Gary Larson

Rosa Hubermann was sitting on the edge of the bed with her husband's accordion tied to her chest. Her fingers hovered above the keys. She did not move. She didn't ever appear to be breathing. — Markus Zusak

I'm not very good at the accordion. If I played guitar, I wouldn't be on anyone's album. But because I play the accordion and no one else does, I end up doing strange things. — Daniel Handler

A fist plowed into my face. My head belted back. I heard a wheeze and a crunch like the sound of a broken accordion. — M. Pierce

I'm probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion. — Ricky Jay

No, but a cello is the perfect string bass for an accordion. Works with it beautifully. — Elizabeth Moon

I am certain that over the course of your own life, you have noticed that people's rooms reflect their personalities. In my room, for instance, I have gathered a collection of objects that are important to me, including a dusty accordion on which I can play a few sad songs, a large bundle of notes on the activities of the Baudelaire orphans, and a blurry photograph, taken a very long time ago, of a woman whose name is Beatrice. These are items that are very precious and dear to me. — Lemony Snicket

I started writing when I was around 6. I say 'writing,' but it was really just making up stuff! I started writing and doing my own thing. I didn't really know what a demo was or anything like that, so I started getting interested in studio gear and started learning about one instrument at a time. My first instrument was an accordion. — Hunter Hayes

I don't like seeing you hit."
"Well, to be quite honest, I don't like being hit unless it's by you." As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized what I had said. "That sounded all sorts of wrong."
"Insanely so, actually."
"To be clear," I said to any overhearing ears, "I hit him back
"
"Hard."
"It's a very give-and-take, non-abuse type hitting situation ... "
The sides of Liam's mouth folded up like an accordion. "You should probably stop now."
"I'm trying. My mouth keeps moving of its own accord. — Tammy Blackwell

Just then there came the wheezy sound of an accordion. It was an odd little tune that, had he been alive exactly one hundred and fifty years later, the scarf-wearing pirate would have recognized as the first few bars from 'Theme to Murder, She Wrote'. — Gideon Defoe

What he did succeed in seeing behind him in his mind's eye was tiny, compressed like a closed accordion. — Milan Kundera

Anachronism is not the inconsequential juxtaposition of epochs, but rather their inter-penetration, like the telescoping legs of a tripod, a series of tapering structures. Since it's quite far from one end to the other they can be opened out like an accordion; but they can also be stacked inside one another like Russian dolls, where the walls around time periods are extremely close to one another. The people of other centuries hear our phonographs blaring, and through the walls of time we see them raising their hands towards the deliciously prepared meal. — Elisabeth Lenk

Fingers interlocked like a beautiful accordion of flesh or a zipper of prayer — Sarah Kay

[Time was] an accordion, all the air squeezed out of it as you grew old. — Helen Hooven Santmyer

Time collapses and expands like an erratic accordion ... — Bel Kaufman