Fiddle Quotes & Sayings

From time to time he would feel that acute surge go over him, like his blood was too hot all of a sudden, dying away into that warm unhappy feeling that fiddle music gave him. — William Faulkner

I play the fiddle ... I'm not much to listen to yet, but we got no mice in our house. — Annie Proulx

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

It was a hurting tune, resigned, a cry of heartache for all in the world that fell apart. As ash rose black against the brilliant sky, Fire's fiddle cried out for the dead, and for the living who stay behind to say goodbye. — Kristin Cashore

At a young age I thought, 'Wow, that fiddle thing, that's pretty cool. That mandolin is great. These drums, I like these drums ... ' They were Indian drums. And I was saying, 'But that guitar. That guitar. Girls are going to like that guitar.' — Robbie Robertson

He liked to think that Heaven was what each person wanted it to be. He could see no future in lying around on a fluffy white cloud and listening to somebody playing on a harp, a picture of Heaven he had seen numerous times in one form or another. Even if it was that way, his personal preference would have run more to the fiddle. — Elmer Kelton

Telling a story is like playing a fiddle. No one want's to hear it when it's done badly — K.A. Young

The expertise displayed by each musician is jaw-dropping and it's matched by their sensitivity and taste ... Lizzy Hoyt displays equal mastery of the fiddle, harp and guitar, complemented by an otherworldly voice. To top it off, she comes across as a truly natural and relaxed, people loving performer. — Jim Sinclair

For he would rather have at his bed's head Some twenty books, all bound in black and red, Of Aristotle and his philosophy Than rich robes, fiddle, or gay psaltery. ========== Canterbury Tales — Anonymous

I have never tried to fiddle my role as leader of the city of Sheffield, as an MP or as a minister. — David Blunkett

There's some places where, I don't know if they're fiddle fans, or Natalie fans or if they just love Celtic music, but there's some places where there's just awesome crowds. — Natalie MacMaster

But here in the open air, this naked, solitary fiddle began a rhythm that played havoc with time, making patterns that set you to moving and told your heart it had been beating the wrong way all your misspent life. — Kristen D. Randle

To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension ... — T. S. Eliot

From inside the tavern came the sounds of a fiddle being tuned, various plucks and tentative bowings, then a slow and groping attempt at Aura Lee, interrupted every few notes by unplanned squeaks and howls. Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished. — Charles Frazier

Check my riddle, and I'll let you play my fiddle. — Zack Love

The trick to playing second fiddle is to play it like second Stradivarius. — Robert Breault

Yakov spent the whole day playing his fiddle; when it got completely dark, he took the notebook in which he recorded his losses daily, and out of boredom began adding up the yearly total. It came to over a thousand roubles. This astounded him so much that he flung the abacus to the floor and stamped his feet. Then he picked up the abacus, again clicked away for a long time, and sighed deeply and tensely. His face was purple and wet with sweat. He thought that if he could have put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, he would have earned at least forty roubles a year in interest. And therefore those forty roubles were a loss. In short, wherever you turned, there was nothing but losses everywhere.
- Rothchild's Fiddle — Anton Chekhov

My interest in his new toy, the Theremin, isn't very big. It simply does not fit into my way of playing music. I do not want to fiddle around with my hands in the air. — Klaus Schulze

In choosing, moreover, for his father an amiable man of fifty-two, who had already lost an only son, and for his mother a woman of thirty-eight, whose first and only child he was, little Jon had done well and wisely. What had saved him from becoming a cross between a lap dog and a little prig, had been his father's adoration of his mother, for even little Jon could see that she was not merely just his mother, and that he played second fiddle to her in his father's heart: What he played in his mother's heart he knew not yet. — John Galsworthy

The Fiddle Creek Steakhouse [in Stephenville, TX] started selling what they called an 'Alien Secretion' shot: ¾ shot of Malibu rum, ¾ shot of melon or Midori liqueur, ½ ounce of sweet and sour mix, ½ ounce of pineapple juice. — Steve Volk

As people's capacities wane, whether through age or ill health, making their lives better often requires curbing our purely medical imperatives - resisting the urge to fiddle and fix and control. — Atul Gawande

I got to where I couldn't listen to country radio. Country music is supposed to have steel and fiddle. When I hear country music, it should be country. — Gretchen Wilson

I didn't know why this was happening. The cruel reality of anxiety is that you never quite do. At the moments it should logically strike, I am fit as a fiddle. On a lazy afternoon, I am seized by a cold dread. — Lena Dunham

I had discovered that being a writer gave you a lot of license to fiddle with the truth, but I'd better not get into the habit of it. — Robert McCammon

If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity. — Phyllis Bottome

How remote we were too from the crazy musicians who arrived on a blustery fall day with the idea that, since this was a financial center, there would be a rain of coins from the tall buildings in response to their trumpet, guitar, and bass fiddle. The wind swirled their jazz among the canyons. I saw that no one was paying them the slightest attention. Feeling guilty, I threw them a quarter, but they didn't see it. They danced and made jazz in the cold, while upstairs we went on with our work, and they didn't exist, and it was nobody's fault. — Alan Harrington

Sometimes, the Angel [of Music] leans over the cradle ... and that is how there are little prodigies who play the fiddle at six better than men of fifty, which, you must admit is very wonderful. Sometimes, the Angel comes much later, because the children are naughty and won't learn their lessons or practice their scales. And sometimes, he does not come at all, because the children have a wicked heart or a bad conscience. — Gaston Leroux

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine. — Marianne Moore

Runcorn was second fiddle, never first, but he had played the more beautiful tune. — Anne Perry

The smell of roasting meat rose from the street stalls in a sizzle and a fiddle player begged for coin as he rasped a haunting melody. Life could not be more perfect. — Sara Sheridan

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay — William Butler Yeats

I see the beauty of Mike's attempt to devise an ideal ethic and applaud his recognition that such must start by junking the present sexual code and starting fresh. Most philosophers haven't the courage for this; they swallow the basics of the present code
monogamy, family pattern, continence, body taboos, conventional restrictions on intercourse, and so forth
then fiddle with details ... even such piffle as discussing whether the female breast is an obscene sight! (p.365) — Robert A. Heinlein

If Nero had played a better fiddle, Rome might never have burned. — Marty Rubin

My mother and dad played the fiddle and the guitar. — Gordie Howe

I'll string a fiddle with your guts and make you play it while I dance. — Patrick Rothfuss

Fish fiddle de-dee! — Edward Lear

If we had known it would eventually involve the KGB, the French National Police, and the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, we would have left that body in the river and called the Polizei like any normal German citizen; but we were Americans and addicted to solving other people's problems, so naturally, we got involved. — Rosanne Parry

Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony. — Andrei Gromyko

We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever took we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, that exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theaters. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder. — Willa Cather

Do I start with the lyrics? No. Quite honestly, it's the opposite. I generally get the melody first - I kinda fiddle around on the guitar and work out a melody. The lyrics are there to flesh out the tone of the music. I've tried before to do things the other way around, but it never seems to work. Obviously, I spend a lot of time on my lyrics, I take them very seriously, but they're kinda secondary. Well, equal, maybe. I think sometimes that if you write a poem, it should remain as just a poem, just ... words. — Iron & Wine

Start by scrapping the tax code. Don't fiddle with it. Junk it. Throw it out. Bury it. Replace it with a pro-growth, pro-family tax cut that lowers tax rates to 17% across the board and expands exemptions for individuals and children so that a family of four would pay no taxes on the first $36,000 of income. — Steve Forbes

The light was grainy, dusty; it looked like the Milky Way had spread from the top of the sky all down the west, and the tented shapes of the mountains were huge and satin black against it, and the ridgeline trees made a filigree of onyx. The wind had increased but not cooled; the promise of full summer was in it. And when Dr. Barcroft turned from the west to look again at the house, he was hardly surprised to see that it had begun to turn like a wheel upon a vertical axle as the silhouettes of the dancers raced past window after window. It was as if their dancing, the female slide and shuffle, the masculine drum and thunder, propelled the house behind them; it had become a merry-go-round, turning steadily and stately as the music went just a little bit faster, just a little more, and he could tell there were furies in it, whirlwinds and cyclones and hurricanes that Quigley's fiddle barely held in check, that his calling could barely control. — Fred Chappell

I found it really hard for a couple of years to do any writing because all I wanted to do was play the fiddle. From the minute I took it up, I just couldn't put it down. — Kate Thompson

The Swedish folk music - I can't hear any connection between my music and fiddle tunes, but I guess since I grew up with that, kind of, Swedish tone or harmony. — Gustav Ejstes

Chris is the engineer down at the studio where we do these things. And he's just such an integral part and he has such a marvelous ear. Also it turns out, we didn't know, but he's a pretty good fiddle player. — Guy Clark

I hope it might help players have confidence in our own ways, and not to be afraid of them, as Bernstein showed - things like hoe-downs, fiddle songs, and the art of improvisation, and the New Orleans funeral tradition, and call-and-response church singing, and the fact that the blues run through everything. And in our relationship to European music, in that we don't have to imitate it, it's a part of us, inseparable. — Wynton Marsalis

It needs more skill than I can tell
To play the second fiddle well. — Charles Spurgeon

I think the issue of female friendship really resonates well with women, ... So many women have a friend like Darcy or can relate to the feeling of being second-fiddle to a friend. — Emily Giffin

We are fiddle, fork, and spoon,
We are dancing with the moon,
If you'd like to steal a kiss from us,
You'd better steal one soon! — Elizabeth Gilbert

My grandfather played a mandolin, so I got my hands on that. Then on down to a banjo, and I found I couldn't play any kind of soft or mournful music with that so I took up the fiddle in my late 20s or early 30s - and that was far too late. But it keeps me off the streets. It has been a love of mine since I was 17 maybe. — Brendan Gleeson

We all know of course, that we should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever fiddle around in any way with electrical equipment. NEVER. — Daniel Handler

When Elizabeth was old and had a wrinkled face and black teeth, she was one day discovered practicing the dance step alone, to the sound of a fiddle, determined to keep up to the last the limberness and agility necessary to impress foreign ambassadors with her grace and youth. — William Shakespeare

Humans possess no monopoly on the powers of preservation and destruction. Our ability to wield these powers with sustained intent, however, is unmatched on this earth. Nature can trump us in an instance or over millenia, but in the day-to-day main, humankind has developed a preponderant ability to fiddle with destiny. More than any other natural force or creature, we decide what will go and what will stay: the rainforest, an old building, a sickly cat ... ourselves. — Michael Perry

That's what she keeps you around for, to diddle her fiddle. Because you're low-hung and she's high-strung! — Jim Thompson

Well fiddle dee dee! — Margaret Mitchell

Flying was as necessary to my business as fiddles and footlights. — Charley Pride

Rome is burning, Jesus says. Drop your fiddle, change your life and come to Me. Let go of the good days that never were - a regimented church you never attended, traditional virtues you never practiced, legalistic obedience you never honored, and a sterile orthodoxy you never accepted. The old era is done. The decisive inbreak of God has happened. — Brennan Manning

Yes. And Paula's a bitch," I said without preamble. "You mean Miss Mint Julep Ladygirl Fiddle-dee-dee? Yeah. Screw her. — C.D. Reiss

I'm a guitarist by background. That's what I used to do for sessions when I was younger and that sort of thing. We have several pianos in the house and I tend to just sit and fiddle around. — Steven Price

If the heart of a man is depressed with cares, The mist is dispell'd when a woman appears; Like the notes of a fiddle, she sweetly, sweetly Raises the spirits, and charms our ears. — John Gay

I couldn't hit an elephant's ass with a bull fiddle. — Babe Didrikson Zaharias

It was really amazing. I mean, he'd never mentioned that he played in the symphony, like serious violin playing, not fiddle playing. And he just blew us away. — Guy Clark

Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was as golden as the sun's rays, and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes. She wheedled her mother, was kind to her doll, took great care of her frock and her red shoes and her fiddle, but loved most of all, when she went to sleep, to hear the Angel of Music. — Gaston Leroux

Others import yet nobler arts from France, Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance. — Alexander Pope

There's a lot of "fiddle-faddle" wrapped up in that word "inspiration." It is the last resort of the lazy writer, of the man who would rather sit and dream than be up and doing. If the majority of writers who depend upon fiction for a livelihood were to wait for the spirit of inspiration to move them, the sheriff would happen along and tack a notice on the front door--while the writers were still waiting. — John Milton Edwards

Yeah, I was a pretty good kid, you know, I was - I was- I was an overachiever and I worked very hard, played a hell of a fiddle. — Mike Wallace

The Bible is like a bull fiddle, you can play almost any tune you want on it. — Tommy Douglas

Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one. — Duke Ellington

Fold it like an animation. I'm sure you remember the rules."
Ceony nodded, but as Mg. Thane finished the last Folds, she saw up his loose coat sleeve to a bandage coiled thickly around his right forearm.
Something inside of her twanged, like a fiddle string had been stretched down her torso, fastened between throat and navel. With a soft voice, she asked, "What happened to your arm?"
Mg. Thane's fingers stilled. He glanced up at her, then to his arm. He pulled the sleeve down to the palm of his hand. "Just a bump," he said. "I often forget how much focus walking requires. — Charlie N. Holmberg

He says softly, "I don't just want you in my dreams, baby. Been wanting you a long while."
fiddle sticks
I whisper, "Niki."
He puts his lips close to mine and breathes deep, "You're all I think about." I feel the tingles start in my in my nose. A sure sign I'm going to bawl. "Stop."
But he just keeps coming with the sweet, "I thought I needed a woman like you. Turns out I just needed you."
My breath hitches. "Stop."
What he says next melts my frozen heart.
"You're it, Tina."
I no longer have doubts
My heart skips a beat and I whisper fiercely, "I want to kiss you. Real bad. — Belle Aurora

Her fingers flew, her fiddle was an entire orchestra, and every note beautifully brought into being struck a chord of satisfaction within her. She wondered at the unfamiliar lightness in her chest and realised she was laughing.
So great was her focus, it took her a while to register the strange expression that crept to Brocker's face as he listened, finger tapping the armrest of his chair. His eyes were fixed behind Fire and to the right, in the direction of Archer's back doorway. Fire comprehended that someone must be standing in Archer's entrance, someone Brocker watched with startled eyes.
And then everything happened at once. Fire recognised the mind in the doorway; she spun around, fiddle and bow screeching apart; she stared at Prince Brigan leaning against the door frame. — Kristin Cashore

World-building is my favorite pastime, so with me, I'm always about reining myself in. I don't want to lose too much of the mystery by hammering every detail to death. I did fiddle with lots of maps for 'Glass Sword,' as the second installment sees Mare, Cal and company traveling throughout their country, and that's always fun for me. — Victoria Aveyard

So when you do get on, the first class people are already sitting there; they're all sprawled out on their big thrones. Bring me the head of a pig! And a goblet of something cool and refreshing! Anyone have a fiddle? Amuse me. — Brian Regan

Well, I had a fiddle that I really can't play, so I loaned it to Darrell. But yeah, he's from another planet. — Guy Clark

Most moral philosophers consciously or unconsciously assume the essential correctness of our cultural sexual code - family, monogamy, continence, the postulate of privacy, ... restriction of intercourse to the marriage bed, etcetera. Having stipulated our cultural code as a whole, they fiddle with details - even such piffle as solemnly discussing whether or not the female breast is an "obscene" sight! But mostly they debate how the human animal can be induced or forced to obey this code, blandly ignoring the high probability that the heartaches and tragedies they see all around them originate in the code itself rather than the failure to abide by the code. — Robert A. Heinlein

The devil, that old stager, who leads downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way! — Robert Browning

A raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, — Mark Twain

If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle wiht the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expacted or hoped to see than on what was really there. — Madeleine K. Albright

Much of poetry in the making is the fiddle with a few items. You lay a word against another and wait. You try another word. And another. Yet another. You wait. You begin again. Listening. Looking. For the elusive inevitable thing which has to arrive before it is recognised. And, like Odysseus, may not be recognised at first. — Craig Raine

The room where I am lodging is stupendous. Thank God I am as fit as a fiddle. — Pietro Mascagni

I feel warm toward my Irish side, but I don't know the country or the people. Hearing a traditional Irish fiddle, I feel very connected to Ireland, but that's a nostalgia many people feel who aren't Irish at all. — Daniel Hope

Now, this one might be a little stringy, but then again, it's fiddle player."
That isn't fiddle player, it's piccolo player."
How can you tell?"
It's PIPING hot!"
Then blow on it first! — Stephen Sondheim

O, Love's but a dance,
Where Time plays the fiddle!
See the couples advance -
O, Love's but a dance!
A whisper, a glance,
"Shall we twirl down the middle?"
O, Love's but a dance,
Where Time plays the fiddle! — Henry Austin Dobson

I've known Shawn for several years. And he's just an amazing talent. He's a great writer, a marvelous, marvelous guitar player, and plays really good fiddle. — Guy Clark

I have no ear for music. When I attend a concert, I endeavor gamely to follow the sequence and relationship of sounds but cannot keep it up for more than a few minutes. Visual impressions, reflections of hands in lacquered wood, a diligent bald spot over a fiddle, take over, and soon I am bored beyond measure by the motions of the musicians. — Vladimir Nabokov

I'm much more open to being a supporting actor right now. At the age of 60, I'll be second fiddle. Fine. I'm happy to do it. — Robin Williams

How she wished she were back at home with her family, strumming her banjo on the porch while Grampa Cornpone played the fiddle. Oh, the steamy bayou nights of her youth! Ma would cook up a huge pan of Creole innards, whilst Pa sat in the corner smoking his pipe of tabaccy with the hound dogs snoozing at his feet. — Howard Mittelmark

FIDDLE, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse's tail on the entrails of a cat. — Ambrose Bierce

Ah, selfish. There's that word again." Sherry smirked. "It's been hurled at me many a time, because being a mother and wife is all about selflessness, see?" She imitated a perky, syrupy-sweet voice. "Giving up every molecule of your soul. If you want anything for yourself, you're accused of being selfish. Marriage and especially motherhood mean being condemned to play second fiddle your entire life. — Andrea Lochen

My father urged Alan [Lomax] not to repeat the mistakes of the European folklorists who, a century ago, had collected these peasant songs and then arranged them for part choir and accompanied them on piano, and then told the young people of their country, "Don't change a note, this is our sacred heritage." Father said, whether it's a fiddle tune or a gospel song, learn it right off the record from the people who grew up with it. Don't just learn it from a piece of paper. — Pete Seeger

My focus on the budget, though, has played second fiddle to what I believe is even more important - creating jobs. — Jack Markell

Every exchange making him feel like an idiot, making him draw his spine up straight and making him fiddle with his hair, and all he wanted to do was to see her naked on the floor. Not brutal, not unkind, enraptured. — Robert Goolrick

When I was a kid, my parents would play badminton, but I hardly joined them. I'd just pick up their racquets and fiddle around. Check out how the racquet was made ... toss it around to see how light it was! At the time, I didn't even know I'd play badminton. — Saina Nehwal

When I was younger, my mom loved to garden. But the flowers would never grow. She just kept trying.'
'I don't understand.'
'Because you can't.'
'What does this have to do with anything?'
I don't fiddle with my fingers and there's no apology on the tip of my tongue when I say, 'I am my mother's son. — Ellie Lieberman

When I was very young my mother sang to me at bedtime and my dad would often play the banjo or fiddle in the evening. I knew music was important and central to everything, most particularly it had a powerful healing value and created a sense of peace and security. This stood out to me as I always felt the world was precarious and dangerous, and music supplied those moments of real peace and safety. — Rory Block

It's just a two-man con," said Shadow. "Like the bishop and the diamond necklace and the cop. Like the guy with the fiddle, and the guy who wants to buy the fiddle, and the poor sap in between them who pays for the fiddle. Two men, who appear to be on opposite sides, playing the same game. — Neil Gaiman

Those who refuse to play second fiddle may wind up playing no fiddle at all. — Mason Cooley

It's a beautiful lucid dream that has language that I can fiddle with. — Coleman Barks

Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition. — Wynton Marsalis

Millions of Americans would still despair in the eight long years of the Depression that lay ahead and many of their individual dreams would be dashed on the rocks of economic hardship. But collectively, the country was in a new place, with a new confidence that the federal government would actively try to solve problems rather than fiddle or cater to the rich. Hope was no longer for Pollyannas; the cynics about the American system were in retreat. — Jonathan Alter