Cellist Quotes & Sayings

What most interests me is human connection, whether it's on the street, in
community, through music, storytelling, and shared experience. People tell me to be a rock cellist, make money, and give up on the activism so I can make more money. — Ben Sollee

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it. — Alan Perlis

Art is magic ... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic. — Hans Hofmann

Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession's phlegm, and needs no ancestors. — Aaron Hill

My whole family is in the arts some way or the other. My father was a cellist in a symphony outside Chicago that was a side-job, he was a scientist. My mother was a dancer in New York. She was next-door neighbors with Dorothy Loudon and they moved to New York together. Mom was a dancer in New York for several years before she got married. My sister was a classical pianist. And my brother was a partier. So it all just seemed to work. — Jason Graae

I was always jealous of my violinist friends and cellist friends who traveled with their instruments. — Christian McKay

Vanity is something that will only get in the way of doing your best work, and ultimately if you're truly vain you care more about your work than how you look in your work. I actually consider myself a pretty vain guy when it comes to that. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

Even after six years, he was still turned on by the bastard, still desperate to kiss his lips and see how it felt to kiss him into submission, until he saw him as more than a loser geek.
He wanted to taste his tongue, to touch his abs and stroke his cock; do all the things that it was so wrong to want to do to him. Wrong because of Ben, because of his love for Ben,
because he barely knew Jaxton, back then and now.
What the hell was wrong with him? — Elaine White

Gratitude opens the heart. Lovingkindness fills it. — Marese Hickey

The touch of his fingertips on my back is like a great cellist brushing the strings of his instrument, or a watchmaker turning a tiny screw invisible to the naked eye. The feeling is erotic, magical, and I just want to go home and go to bed. — Chloe Thurlow

He stares at the cellist, and feels himself relax as the music seeps into him. He watches as the cellist's hair smoothes itself out, his beard disappears. A dirty tuxedo becomes clean, shoes polished bright as mirrors ... The building behind the cellist repairs itself. The scars of bullets and shrapnel are covered by plaster and paint, and windows reassemble, clarify and sparkle as the sun reflects off glass. The cobblestones of the road set themselves straight. Around him people stand up taller, their faces put on weight and colour. Clothes gain lost thread, brighten, smooth out their wrinkles. Kenan watches as his city heals itself around him. The cellist continues to play ... — Steven Galloway

We await their creative interpretations of works by others and we love how they freely adapt and alter the music we like and enjoy. The wonderful magical alchemy they co-create is enough to spur the imagination of the audience. There is no need for other instruments or vocals. The music alone suffices. Listening to them, we can close our eyes and be taken away to a faraway place, we can envision a story or embellish a memory. We can connect to spirit and source and what we connect to in our deepest being is akin to religious experience. They dedicate themselves to each performance fearlessly, courageously, passionately, and generously. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

The time there was only the one warm-up room for everyone, a room so astonishingly hot and airless and noisy, so crowded with extraordinarily talented-seeming musicians, that everything had begun to spin like a merry-go-round, and a French cellist had reached out a languid hand to save Clementine's cello as it slipped from her grasp. (She was a champion fainter.) The — Liane Moriarty

He's been asleep since the war began. He knows this now. In defending himself from death he lost his grip on life. He thinks of Emina, risking her life to deliver expired pills to someone she's never met. Of the young man who ran into the street to save her when she was shot. Of the cellist who plays for those killed in a mortar attack. He could run now, but he doesn't. — Steven Galloway

My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries. — Yo-Yo Ma

The sniper puts the cellist in his sights. Arrow is about to send a bullet into him, but stops. His finger isn't on the trigger ... His hand isn't even in the vicinity of the trigger ... His head leans back slightly, and she sees that his eyes are closed, that he is no longer looking through his scope. She knows what he's doing. It's very clear to her, unmistakable. He's listening to the music. And then Arrow knows why he didn't fire yesterday ... She is at once, sure of two things. The first is that she does not want to kill this man, and the second is that she must. Time is running out. There's no reason not to kill him. A sniper of his ability has wihtout doubt killed dozens, if not hundreds. Not just soldiers. Women crossing streets. Children in playgrounds. Old men in water lines. She knows this to a certainity. Yet she doesn't want to pull her trigger. All because she can see that he doesn't want to pull his ... The final notes of the cellist's melody reach him, and he smiles. — Steven Galloway

We also learned our own history and I was so grateful that such richness comes from our family stories. Now we will forever remember the day that a Russian cellist spoke the heart of Czech people. Rostropovich loved Prague and so he viewed that performance as a personal tragedy. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

often thought that the simple fact, the mechanical fact, is no closer to the truth than a vague feeling, rumor, vision. Why repeat the facts - they cover up our feelings. — Svetlana Alexievich

Pablo Casals is a great musician in all he does: a cellist without equal, and extraordinary conductor and composer with something to say. I have been profoundly impressed by all I have heard of his work, but he is a musician of this stature because he is also a great man. — Albert Schweitzer

One tended to lose one's bearings in the presence of willful and persistent acts of craziness, and the more gentle the act, the crazier it seemed, as if rage and violence, being closer to the norm, were easier to accommodate. — Tom Robbins

How can two people hate so much without knowing each other? — Alan Moore

I once knew this cellist, Miss Browning,
A swan with whom I enjoyed clowning.
But at night when she bloomed
I felt blissfully doomed.
Far from shore, in danger of drowning. — Julia Glass

The person who imagined that he could not be the victim of propaganda because he could distinguish truth from falsehood, is extremely susceptible to propaganda, because when propaganda does tell the truth, he is then convinced that it is no longer propaganda: moreover, his self-confidence makes him all the more vulnerable to attacks of which he is unaware. — Jacques Ellul

For twelve years I studied and worked at them every day, and I was nearly 25 before I had the courage to play one of them in public. Before I did, no violinist or cellist had ever played a Suite in its entirety. — Pablo Casals

Jaxton couldn't get his mind to settle on one thought, as he stared at the ground.
Roman was here, after all these years. He was just a few steps away from him, talking and flirting with Thayer, as if the last six years had been nothing.
Where had he been? Why did he leave? Why didn't he tell him where he was going, and why had he run off, without a word?
Unable to focus his thoughts, he pushed them aside and ignored them. It was easier to pretend they didn't exist, than to face what they really meant. — Elaine White

There existed very long saxophones from years ago. The player sat on their chair like a cellist; that same sort of feeling to it as well - unlike for example the way a harpist would be: the whole act differing in a very fundamental sense. Although harpists are fine. There is nothing to be said against harpists by any means whatsoever. — James Kelman

Jaxton met his gaze for just a second, then scowled and turned away.
The recognition in that look was painful; years of recollections and long forgotten
emotions buzzed through his brain. Ashamed of the flare of attraction he'd just allowed
himself, he turned away and faked a smile. — Elaine White

To fall in love with someone who does not love you back, is the cruelest, most unforgiving heartache I have ever experienced. — KB

When I was done with high school, I knew that music was really important to me and I knew I didn't want to be a cellist, but I wasn't really sure if I wanted to be a composer, or think about - I was just interested in the ideas behind music, I was interested in mathematics. — Tod Machover

Jaxton hadn't changed, but he had. Maybe his old crush still hated him, but it shouldn't
matter anymore. It didn't matter anymore. He was older, wiser and he had moved on. Jaxton
was nothing more than an old high school crush. — Elaine White

As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul. — Ursula K. Le Guin

My wife and I were shopping for the whole family. In the music department my wife said, "Let's get your nephew a set of drums. That's what your brother did to us last year." — Milton Berle

I remember him. Jaxton only knew I existed long enough to take the piss out of me. He certainly never liked me." Roman sighed, giving his side of the story, though it was a slanted
one. Only three people knew the real story; him, Jaxton and Ben, and it was far from the tale of bully and victim that Jaxton kept telling people.
"Yeah, that's what he said," Thayer agreed, with a laugh.
Roman wasn't even surprised. Disappointed, but never surprised. — Elaine White

There is yet time for all that is to come. — Judy Croome