Best Fiddler Quotes & Sayings

It may not be irrelevant to note that even very modest forms of life, like earthworms, dung beetles and fiddler crabs, have no trouble identifying the real problems they must deal with if they are to survive. — Edward Goldsmith

For the good are always the merry, / Save by an evil chance,/ And the merry love the fiddle,/ And the merry love to dance: / And when the folk there spy me,/ They will all come up to me, / With,"Here is the fiddler of Dooney!" / And dance like a wave of the sea. — W.B.Yeats

As far as I remember, there was no actual lyric written to that.At the very beginning of "Fiddler on the Roof," there's a violin solo, an unaccompanied violin solo. — Sheldon Harnick

Someone coughed nearby, from some huddle of stones, and then spoke. 'So, who are we fighting for again?'
Fiddler could not place the voice.
Nor the one that replied, 'Everyone.'
A long pause, and then, 'No wonder we're losing. — Steven Erikson

I don't give a fiddler's fart! — Frank McCourt

I had my back against the wall. He [Gary Hinman] said, I'm going to tell the police what you did to me. [] This guy is a drug dealer. He's playing the game. And if you're going to dance, you've got to pay the fiddler. You burn somebody, that's the way it is. [I] Stabbed [him] in the heart twice. He died immediately. [] Susan Atkins seemed to think, Oh what fun, how interesting. Susan Atkins is now a Jesus freak in jail. She gave five different testimonies and in one of them, she claimed she killed Hinman. — Bobby Beausoleil

When I appear onstage, that's my departure from Momhood - and I transform into Natalie MacMaster: the entertainer, the fiddler, the performer. — Natalie MacMaster

Ruby said there were many songs that you could not say anybody in particular had made by himself. A song went around from fiddler to fiddler and each one added something and took something away so that in time the song became a different thing from what it had been, barely recognizable in either tune or lyric. But you could not say the song had been improved, for as was true of all human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained, so that over time we'd be lucky if we just broke even. Any thought otherwise was empty pride. — Charles Frazier

We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And, indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again."
~Fiddler, pg. 558 — Steven Erikson

Madonna, she still has not showed, we see this empty cage now corrode, where her cape of the stage once had flowed, the fiddler he now steps to the road, on the back of the fish truck that loads, while my conscience explodes. — Bob Dylan

When I went into 'Fiddler,' I wondered about the response I'd get - the backlash because I'm openly gay. There was none. I toured Canada and America, and not one single review suggested that I played the role gay or that I seemed anything but Tevye. — Harvey Fierstein

A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask 'Why do we stay up there if it's so dangerous?' Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition! — Sheldon Harnick

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate, very simple and emotional, about that music. — Renee Fleming

I wasn't really an old-time breakdown fiddler. — Johnny Gimble

There was once a fiddler who played so beauitully that everybody danced. A deaf man who could not hear the music considered them all insane. Those who are with Jesus in suffering hear this music to which other men are deaf. They dance and do not care if they are considered insane. — Richard Wurmbrand

Even a poor tour guide is entitled to some happiness. — Jacob M. Appel

Quick Ben, tell me, who was the toughest Bridgeburner you ever knew? Think back, and think carefully. Get your ego out of the way. Ignore your favorites and the ones who spent all their time looking mean. Not the callous shits, not the back-stabbers, none of the posers. The toughest, Quick Ben. Day in, day out, good times, bad. Tell me. Who?"
The High Mage squinted, glanced down at the ground at this feet, and then he sighed and nodded, looking up as he said, "I didn't need that list, Ganoes. I knew my answer right from the start. We all knew."
"Who?"
"Fiddler. There's no tougher man alive. — Steven Erikson

It was the moment of early spring like the pause when a fiddler has lifted his bow and holds it over the strings, ready to call forth the music. — Rosslyn Elliott

Legana Breed spoke: 'You are all marines?'
'Aye,' Fiddler said.
'Tonight, then, I too am a marine. Let us go kill people. — Steven Erikson

Parisians are so besotted, so silly and so naturally inept that a street player, a seller of indulgences, a mule with its cymbals,a fiddler in the middle of a crossroads, will draw more people than would a good Evangelist preacher. — Francois Rabelais

I'm into old-time music; I'm not very interested in modern, popular music at all. And if I'm really into some particular old-time musician, some fiddler or banjo player, I'm always dying of curiosity to see what they look like. So there's some connection between visual images and music. — Robert Crumb

If 'tis a sin, I don't give a Fiddler's fart! — Frank McCourt

This would be a great world to dance in if we didn't have to pay the fiddler. — Will Rogers

I was really excited to have the opportunity to make Fiddler. — Norman Jewison

We are now spending half a trillion dollars on foreign oil, importing 62 percent of the oil we use, and we haven't had the leadership in D.C. to do anything about it. We've got to move to other sources of energy. But we've gotten way behind, and will continue to pay the fiddler. It's not a good future. — T. Boone Pickens

We love 'Fiddler.' We love 'West Side Story.' I want to be in that club. I want to be in the club that writes the musical that every high school does. — Lin-Manuel Miranda

A man must pay the fiddler. In my case it so happened that a whole symphony orchestra often had to be subsidized. — John Barrymore

The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune. — Pope Paul VI

I was a Russian dancer in my elementary school production of 'Fiddler on the Roof' when I was in third grade or fourth grade. I was one of the younger kids accepted into the play, and the plays were pretty impressive, let me say. — Lizzy Caplan

Rarely offstage, rarely on hiatus, Fiddler on the Roof has already been back on Broadway for four revivals, played London's West End four times, and remains among Broadway's longest-running shows ever. — Barbara Isenberg