Concertina Quotes & Sayings

I had paid for my folly and, as a reward, was invited to take part in the nest builder's performance piece. The script was great.

'When I bleat here, do you want me to just bleat or to really let go and "bleat, bleat"?' I asked. 'I feel like "bleat, bleating," but if Mother/Destroyer is going to be crawling through the birth canal of concertina wire, I don't want to steal focus, you know what I mean? — David Sedaris

[The biographer] must be as ruthless as a board meeting smelling out embezzlement, as suspicious as a secret agent riding the Simplon-Orient Express, as cold-eyed as a pawnbroker viewing a leaky concertina. — Paul Murray Kendall

As a final test, I tried to look Arthur in the eyes. But no, this time-honoured process didn't work. Here were no windows to the soul. They were merely part of his face, light-blue jellies, like naked shell-fish in the cervices of a rock. There was nothing to hold the attention; no sparkle, no inward gleam. Try as I would, my glance wandered way to more interesting features; the soft, snout-like nose, the concertina chin. After three or four attempts, I gave it up. It was no good. There was nothing for it but to take Arthur at his word. — Christopher Isherwood

At this point doubts started to creep in. One was always reading of
young men running away to sea, or people shipping as deck-hands and
working their passages. There seemed to be no special qualifications
needed. No ropes had to be spliced. No rigging had to be climbed. All
you did was paint the anchor, chip rust off the deck plating and say
'aye, aye, sir', when addressed by an officer. It was a tough life and
you met tough men. There were weevils in the ship's biscuits and you had
little to eat but skilly. Quarrels were settled with bare fists and you
went about naked to the waist. But one of the crew always had a
concertina and there were sing-songs when the day's work was done. In
after life you wrote a book about it. — Eric Ambler

Strike the concertina's melancholy string!
Blow the spirit-stirring harp like any thing!
Let the piano's martial blast
Rouse the Echoes of the Past — W.S. Gilbert

Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects. — Stephen Leacock

Sometimes the distance of years - all that was contained within its concertina folds - was a physical ache. — Kate Morton

When I was at school I used to scream in trains, in those concertina things between the carriages. I used to try to be so good that sometimes I couldn't bear it any more. — Jane Birkin

These past couple of weeks, I'd scaled Kelly's massive wall and peeked at what lay beyond. But I'd made myself too comfortable, and he'd tossed me back out, stacked his defenses thicker and taller and coiled it with a halo of concertina wire. — Cara McKenna