Denk Quotes & Sayings

It's no accident that Op. 111 attracts literary attention. Though it's music, it doesn't quite behave like it. It seems to be charged with meaning, to communicate in symbols, ciphers, clues. — Jeremy Denk

Evangelical Christians are not sincere. It is all about making money. — Frank Schaeffer

Erisha said to Elton, "I have a scheme you might like to be in on. — Elisa Denk

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud. — Bob Uecker

Life to your spirit is not about making a living. — Penelope V. Yorke

Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional. — Edward Abbey

Pleasure dies at the very moment when it charms us most. — Seneca The Younger

To tell about him, one should be French, because only the people of that nation manage to explain to others what they don't understand themselves. — Nikolai Leskov

As you deal with thumb-crossings, or fingerings for the F-sharp-minor scale, or chromatic scales in double thirds, it is hard to accept that these will eventually allow you to probe eternity in the final movement of Beethoven's last sonata. Imagine that you are scrubbing the grout in your bathroom and are told that removing every last particle of mildew will somehow enable you to deliver the Gettysburg Address. — Jeremy Denk

It's long been my dream to have myself declared incompetent so I could just practice all day, and blog, and not have to take care of any normal life things. — Jeremy Denk

I'm one of those pianists who tends to ignore every existing recording and lots of traditions about playing pieces when I start. — Jeremy Denk

I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when one suffers, the other sympathizes. — Lord Chesterfield

Perhaps the most serious complaint you could make about Bach is that he has every quality of humanity except imperfection. — Jeremy Denk

Don't try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can't be done except by liars. — Bernard Baruch

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to go to Oberlin and wanted the liberal arts. Obviously I really get intense pleasure out of drawing connections between pieces and poems and literature and ideas. — Jeremy Denk

I was always shocked when I went to the doctor's office and they did my X-ray and didn't find that I had eight more ribs than I should have or that my blood was the color green. — Nicolas Cage

I believe I was raised with feminist values, but I don't think I ever heard my Mom call herself a feminist. Before I identified as a feminist myself, I thought of feminism as more of a historical term describing the women's movement in the '70s but didn't know much about what they had done and didn't think it applied to my life at all. — Julie Zeilinger

I've learned a lot from being a chameleon, sort of adopting the musical personalities of who I was playing with. — Jeremy Denk

I have no literary approach - except to literature. — George Balanchine

If there's one thing I feel very strongly about, it's that there shouldn't be a distinction between pianists who play Ligeti and those who play Chopin. It might seem that they involve different skill sets, but I don't think that's true: whether playing Ives or Bach or Beethoven, you must bring the same imagination, the same sensitivity, and an ability to deal with same kinds of musical problems. The method behind my madness, anyway, is to keep plugging away at this idea. — Jeremy Denk

The only person who can solve the labyrinth of yourself is You. — Jeremy Denk

I was a kid with a lot of different, strange interests - kind of crazy. — Jeremy Denk