Quotes & Sayings About Piano Playing

I'm sorry I started all this by trying to fly and I'd take it back if I could but I can't, so please think of it from my point of view: if you die I will have a dead brother and it will be me instead of you who suffers.
Justin thought of his brother on that warm summer day, standing up on the windowsill holding both their futures, light and changeable as air, in his outstretched arms.
Of course, Justin thought, I'm part of his fate just as he's part of mine. I hadn't considered it from his point of view. Or from the point of view of the universe, either. It's just a playing field crammed full of cause and effect, billions of dominoes, each knocking over billions more, setting off trillions of actions every second. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and my brother in Luton thinks he can fly.
The child nodded. A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen. — Meg Rosoff

I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano. — Gary Oldman

Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart. If I were pressed to say why I loved him, I feel that my only reply could be: Because it was he, because it was I. — Michel De Montaigne

When I did get signed and I was going around letting people know what I was about, that's exactly how I did it: me on the piano, playing a couple of songs I'd written and talking to the people in between. That's how I got my performance chops up. — Alicia Keys

I started playing the piano, pretty much on my own, when I was 5, and I started writing music when I was 7. In fact, I won a composition award. It was a crummy little piece, but I won with it. — Maury Yeston

I started playing in the band and learned to play piano by ear. — Kevin Richardson

The only instrument I know how to really play, and the instrument that I absolutely love, is the piano. I have been playing piano ever since I have been 9. — Laura Marano

One encounters very capable fathers abashed by their piano-playing daughters. Three measures of Schumann make them red with embarrassment. — Alfred Doblin

No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery. — Kenneth R. Miller

Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings. — Nina Simone

I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of 'Prisoner In Disguise' when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing. — J. D. Souther

I started playing the piano when I was about two and got a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore when I was five. But I left when I was 11. — Tori Amos

When I was very small, the electricity was turned off because we didn't pay the bill. I remember sitting by the oil lamp listening to my mother playing 'Careless Love' on the piano. — Jools Holland

Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards. — Vladimir Horowitz

My sister played the piano. She's two years older than me, and I always wanted to play something. So my grandmother got the guitar for me, and showed me a couple of chords to start off. And then I got me a book. Next thing you know, I was playing along with sister. — Willie Nelson

Usher: Why do you play only on the black keys [of the piano]? I suppose you think black is good enough for the proletariat. You play on all the keys only for the bourgeoisie, is that it?
Oleg Bard: Please, citizen, please! I'm concentrating on the white ones!
Usher: So you think white is best? Play on both!
Oleg Bard: I am playing on both!
Usher: So you compromise with [the] Whites, opportunist! — Vladimir Mayakovsky

But sleep didn't come. She could hear Jace's soft piano playing through the walls, but that wasn't what was keeping her awake. She was thinking of Simon, leaving for a house that no longer felt like home to him, of the despair in Jace's voice as he said 'I want to hate you', and of Magnus, not telling Jace the truth: that Alec did not want Jace to know about his relationship because he was still in love with him. She thought of the satisfaction it would have brought Magnus to say the words out loud, to acknowledge what the truth was, and the fact that he hadn't said them - had let Alec go on lying and pretending - because that was what Alec wanted, and Magnus cared about Alec enough to give him that. Maybe it was true what the Seelie Queen had said, after all: Love made you a liar. — Cassandra Clare

Meditation takes discipline, just like learning how to play piano. If you want to learn how to play the piano, it takes more than a few minutes a day, once a while, here and there. If you really want to learn any important skill, whether it is playing piano or meditation, it grows with perseverance, patience, and systematic training. — Jack Kornfield

Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat 'King' Cole as a performer - not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I'd get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met. — Bruce Forsyth

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going. — John Darnielle

I used to play the piano in the band, and so there's some horrendous scenes of me playing the keyboards. — Caroline Corr

When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs. — Otis Blackwell

The first time I met Ray, I was going to school around the corner from his house. One day, he was playing the piano. I eased up on the porch to listen to him. — Billy Preston

Together, Ann and Wade sit on the piano bench. She turns the pages, which every week grow simpler and simpler. One week, he's playing both hands together. The next week, he struggles on a children's song, with only his right hand. Slowly, as the weeks go by and the weather turns cold, she turns the pages backward. They return to the place where they met, to the place where he didn't know the names of any notes, where he showed delight inside of his struggles to learn them. He taps on his thigh, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. But even that proves difficult, eventually. Eventually, she puts the metronome away. — Emily Ruskovich

I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing, and business, and playing the piano and so on. — William Hague

Working with Monk brought me close to a musical architect of the highest order. I felt I learned from him in every way
through the senses, theoretically, technically. I would talk to Monk about musical problems, and he would sit at the piano and show me the answers just by playing them. I could watch him play and find out the things I wanted to know. Also, I could see a lot of things that I didn't know about at all. — John Coltrane

My grandmother was fond of painting and playing the piano. She had been given lessons by Emmanuel Chabrier, who used to spend the summer months in nearby Membrolle. — Yves Chauvin

I went straight in. Fade in, one ... whatever. He's playing the piano in the radio station. — Ronald Harwood

I love playing all kinds of roles. I hope it doesn't sound too pretentious, but I always feel human nature is like a piano, and there are 88 keys, and there are some white keys and some black keys, and each character is a different chord on the piano. Basically, I hope that in the course of my life, I will have played all 88 keys. So, I'll have played heroes and villains and princes and kings and warriors and beggars and thieves and lovers and fathers and wizards and all of those things. That is why I'm an actor ... I love studying people. — Tom Hiddleston

In college I had a weekend gig at a restaurant, a solo thing that was the best practice I could have ever had. That's where I learned to coordinate my singing and my piano playing. — Norah Jones

Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles. — Gustave Flaubert

I'd go over to my grandmother's house, and she'd be playing opera. They loved opera. Not only did they play it on the radio, but they played it on their piano. Everybody learned how to read music and how to play. — Linda Ronstadt

Involve yourself every day. Work hard and figure out how to love acting all day, every day. It's getting into a made-up situation and making it good and making it real and just playing, just practicing and playing. Like the musicians that I played piano with: they never expect to be rich or famous, but they, for the sheer joy of it, play every day, all day. — Jeff Goldblum

I've been playing videogames since before my career in this business, but what happened is several videogame companies were recruiting students back then and I applied with barely any hope of getting accepted to any of the companies. However, I got accepted! Although my path was already set to become a piano instructor, I chose the path of videogames instead. My parents cried, my friends were worried and my teacher was stunned (we're talking about way back when game music wasn't as popular as it is these days). — Yoko Shimomura

I play only classical music. My pianos are my only big indulgence, but they're a necessity. When I'm playing the piano is literally the only time I can be completely abstract and disconnected from the regular world and yet be connected - to my music. — Rafael Vinoly

Prayer is when you talk to God. Meditation is when you're listening. Playing the piano allows you to do both at the same time. — Kelsey Grammer

I teach in M.F.A. programs now, and I think that's a great way to become a novelist, but I mourn that Pete Dexter and Joan Didion's route is maybe less likely because there are fewer of those jobs. I always liken it to playing piano in some great dive jazz bar. You didn't pick the songs, you played what people asked for, but you got your chops. — Jess Walter

I had been playing single note instruments and I wanted to hear a guitar played as a piano. — Leo Kottke

Mac [Barnett] and I prank each other during our presentation. We show baby pictures of each other looking completely ridiculous. I can't believe the frilly shirt that I'm in, and Mac's wearing a sailor suit and playing a toy piano. That's a perfect example of a good prank, where we have three hundred people literally laughing in our faces, three hundred kids at every assembly. And it feels really good. It's really fun. — Jory John

There was something about her playing ... a knowledge of darkness in the most extreme form. — Marisha Pessl

"Playing" the resources of characterology for the sake of clarification and insight into the structures of actual existence is many times more daunting than playing a piano; it requires the thinking of chords of thoughts, not just isolated simplisms or abstracta; it demands the shaping or encompassing of morphological modes of intelligence that can comprehend gestalten, syndromes, historical and civilizational patterns in which it is not the particulars but their interactive significance (as an ensemble of actualities or principles) that is vital. — Kenny Smith

You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone, because you have learned the technique, and not be a master creator. Creation comes first, not technique ... — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I don't let the children watch TV on weeknights. They practice playing musical instruments instead. Both my sons play piano, drums and guitar, so my husband and I listen to them in the evening. — Jane Seymour

Magnus didn't look at her; he was looking down at the tent, where Clary sat talking with Tessa, where Alec stood side by side with Maia and Bat, laughing, where Isabelle and Simon were dancing to the music Jace was playing on the piano, the haunting sweet notes of Chopin reminding him of another time, and the sound of a violin at Christmas. — Cassandra Clare

Making love without noise is like playing a muted piano-fine for practice, but you cheat yourself out of hearing the glorious results. — David Levithan

I sat down at the piano and my hands began to browse over the keys. Thensomething happened. I felt as though I could reach out and touch God. I foundmyself playing a melody, one I'd never heard or played before, and words came intomy head - they just seemed to fall into place ... — Thomas A. Dorsey

I love music, singing, and playing piano (though I'm not very good). And I adore musical theater. — Aprilynne Pike

A few months ago, I was sitting morosely at my desk, wondering why I had ever agreed to review Barbara Bush: A Memoir for an English newspaper. The experience was proving to be a degradation of the act of reading. Imagine, if you will, being strapped into a chair and made to listen to Liberace playing the piano for hour upon hour. Or imagine being fed chocolate dinner mints, like a hapless goose, until you are on the verge of explosion. Such was my lot. — Christopher Hitchens

It seems that a lot of people, who haven't known of me as a pianist, think I've just started off as a comedian. And so for them the piano was something extra. But, of course, playing the piano was something that came before all of what's happened now. — Dudley Moore

I'm quite proud of my piano playing. Robin's never played a note on the piano at our recording sessions. I just wish I could be appreciated musically now. — Maurice Gibb

I didn't decide to start to playing piano until I was almost 13 years old when my friends and I thought it would be fun to start a band. None of us actually played any instruments so the band never quite got off the ground, BUT it made me go home and ask my parents for piano lessons. That was really the beginning for me. Once I started, it was all I wanted to do. — Andrew Hollander

Sati - sampajanna ("Mindfulness and clear comprehension") should be examined carefully from the point of view of the centipede who could not walk when she thought about how she moved her limbs. And also from the point of view of absorption in, say artistic creation and detached observation of it. Absorption in piano playing or painting seems to be "successful" but detached observation or enjoyment of "my playing" or "my painting" seems to have the centipede effect. What are the facts here and what is the lesson to be drawn? — Nanamoli Thera

Music for me is a bit more spiritual. There are moments when I'm sitting at my piano, and I don't realize that I've been playing for two hours - it feels like divine power. I know it's so cheesy. — Mary Lambert

I started playing piano when I was around four; that's my first passion. — Condola Rashad

You've found a way to stay sane, Renfew--even if that means admitting a tiny piece of piano-playing madness into your world. But there's a cost to that sanity, and it isn't moi. the cost is you can't ever allow yourself an instant of hope, because hope is something that will always be crushed, crushed utterly, and in the crushing of hope you will be weakened forever, just as surely as if you'd mainlined some slow-acting poison."
~"Understanding Space & Time — Alastair Reynolds

Usually, I'll just sit down at a piano or with a guitar, and I'll just be relaxed and playing music. Because that's what relaxes your subconscious. That's why everyone from animals to humans love music. — Cat Power

I play piano all the time. I'm always at my piano, playing music. — Brian Wilson

Love is not automatic. It takes conscious practice and awareness, just like playing the piano or golf. However, you have ample opportunities to practice. Everyone you meet can be your practice session. — Hari

Collaboration is just about finding people who are better than you at certain things and combining your powers. Like, if I'm not the strongest at playing piano, I'll work with someone who's really good at it and we'll combine both our brains to write a song. — Charlyne Yi

I was up playing violin at seven and translating that information to play guitar, piano at eight. — Ronnie Milsap

I was always very leery of my piano playing. As a young kid, I wanted to be a jazz musician, but my taste was far greater than my ability. — Mike Stoller

Walking into the library, I took in my breath sharply and stopped: glass fronted bookcases and Gothic panels, stretching fifteen feet to a frescoed and plaster-medallioned ceiling. In the back of the room was a marble fireplace, big as a sepulchre, and a globed gasolier
dripping with prisms and strings of crystal beading
sparkled in the dim.
There was a piano, too, and Charles was playing, a glass of whiskey on the seat beside him. He was a little drunk; the Chopin was slurred and fluid, the notes melting sleepily into one another. A breeze stirred the heavy, moth-eaten velvet curtains, ruffling his hair. — Donna Tartt

She always paid attention to fingers rather than faces because they told so much more. People remembered to guard their faces. They forgot their hands. Her own were small, though strong and supple from all the hours of piano playing, but what use was that now? For the first time she understood what real danger does to the human mind, as flat white fear froze the coils of her brain. — Kate Furnivall

You get this really cool groove when you're playing just piano, bass, and drums where everyone's sort of feeling each other's space, which is the only way to put it, but it really is true, and everyone's sort of sitting in their own pocket. It's kind of jazz-like. — John Darnielle

Well, my sister played trumpet. Can you imagine having a sister blowing the trumpet around the house, Fred? And my brother, he played piano. Everybody was playing some kind of music, so it was natural for me to get into it. — Freddie Hubbard

Conducting has more to do with singing and breathing than with piano-playing. — Colin R. Davis

I liked the piano. I always liked playing. I just hated homework. — Mike Shinoda

My mom tells this story that even when I was in the womb, my father played the piano and she sang. So, before I officially got here, I was already surrounded by music. I also like the way my father explains it. When I was about 3-years old, in order to keep me quiet, my father would put me in the bassinet and either put on some music or play the piano. When he started playing, I got quiet and eventually went to sleep. He said by the time I turned 3, I just climbed up on the piano and started playing it with the attitude of I'm gonna play dis here piano. — Cyrus Chestnut

When I was playing piano, it was like, 'I'm going to write a song using all the white keys.' My music director, who knew my jazz background, suggested I try big-band music, so we spent a year experimenting with it in concert, and the audience reaction was really good. — John Tesh

I enjoy playing the audience like a piano. — Alfred Hitchcock

On television I feel like a man playing piano in a brothel; every now and again he solaces himself by playing 'Abide with Me' in the hope of edifying both the clients and the inmates — Malcolm Muggeridge

Music has been a huge passion of mine ever since I started playing the piano at age 3. Going to concerts, performing on my own, and listening to my favorite artists growing up confirmed that love for music and made me want to pursue it as a career. — Daya

I've been playing piano my whole life, but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made, really. Try to imagine if you'd loved paintings your whole life but had never painted one. My aspiration now is just to understand. — Caio Fonseca

I just loved classical music, but I also loved playing rock guitar, and I loved playing piano, so it was a natural thing that those things would merge at some point. — Trevor Rabin

The real you is still a little child who never grew up. Sometimes that little child comes out when you are having fun or playing, when you feel happy, when you are painting, or writing poetry, or playing the piano, or expressing yourself in some way. These are the happiest moments of your life - when the real you comes out, when you don't care about the past and you don't worry about the future. You are childlike. — Miguel Ruiz

I love playing the piano. I have one in my apartment, and I learnt by ear. I sing a lot of Coldplay, but do my own stuff too. — Christopher Egan

Someone skipped on the rent and they left behind a huge upright piano, which got moved into our apartment so the other apartment could get rented out. I took to it and started playing. — Cy Coleman

My activities tend to revolve around crossword puzzles, reading and playing piano and games with my friends. — Rashida Jones

Music has an alchemical quality. And there's more than one voice on the piano. You have two hands. One can be playing a celestial melody while the other is doing quite the opposite. The joining of the profane and the sacred, or the passionate and the compassionate, happens right there on the keyboard. — Tori Amos

Then I was playing the piano at eight, and that helps you learn about women because most of the people I was playing for were women. — Jamie Foxx

I started playing piano; I picked up a ukulele, and I loved it and kept playing that. I play a bit of guitar, and some African drums from back in the day. — Max Schneider

I'm an intense guy. I run 10 miles a day, which helps alleviate my intensity. Also, singing helps defuse my intensity. Playing the piano helps, and writing helps. — Dan Hill

In terms of how the music developed, it was my normal process, which I would say is really a hybrid process of sketching on bits of paper, playing the piano, playing synthesisers, using the computer, staring out of the window, finding things I'd forgotten about, happy accidents, failed plans, best intentions, equipment failures. It is a multidimensional process incorporating a lot of planning and intention and a lot of randomness. Ultimately I just follow the material where it wants to go a lot of the time. — Max Richter

My dad keeps referring to me playing the piano when he's trying to teach me something in archery. — Miranda Leek

Well, since I'm six years old, I've been playing the violin, the piano, I've been singing. It's always been a dream of mine, but I really never had the courage to actually go and do it professionally. — Paris Hilton

My hands look terrible but I can do anything I want to do, so, you know, I just think I'm playing all around with more good taste and not dashing up and down the piano. — Marian McPartland

It's like I'll sit down and put my hands on the piano or the guitar, and then I'll hear a sound or I'll feel a chord that will resonate and then I'll get something happening in my voice. My voice is like a car that I get into and drive but I don't know where I'm going. And I record everything. And often, I sort of get into a state, a creative state that is, where I'm just feeling around melodically, and playing things off the top of my head. Then I go back and listen to it and for the first time, hear what I just did. It's like Elvis has left the building while the thing is happening. — Beth Nielsen Chapman

I spent ten years playing classical piano, and that was what led to keyboards and eventually to production and to Linkin Park. — Mike Shinoda

Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings. — Ignacy Jan Paderewski

All too frequently the amateur will purchase a fine modern camera and proceed to use it for making the most elementary simple snapshots. This surely is like playing 'Chopsticks' on a concert grand piano. — Sam Haskins

I first started playing in piano bars for three reasons - to make money, to be in the company of my friends - and also to hook up with young girls. I always knew, even before I played in piano bars, about the effect of my voice. — Andrea Bocelli

When I was younger, playing piano and guitar were all things that I wanted to do for a short period of time, like any kid. — Katie Cassidy

When I do my own books, I take it as more of my own confessional, but when I illustrate for other people, it is intriguing because I feel like I shouldn't be stepping too much into the limelight. It's like playing the piano while someone else is singing. — Peter Sis

I had 12 years of classical music as a child, playing piano competitions as a teenager, playing in blues bands and rock 'n' roll bands, country and jazz bands. I played in about any situation. — Ronnie Milsap

The interesting thing is that, well, here's what I think about songwriters and songs. Sometimes people sit down and say, "I gotta write a song today, I have a title" and all of that, and sometimes inspiration just happens, almost like "Sugar, Sugar" and a couple of the other songs. But basically, I just started playing the piano, and I'm not a great piano player. — Andy Kim

I had studied piano since I was 13, but I was surrounded by students who'd been playing since they were 5. I realized I was never going to be anything but mediocre. — Kevin Kline

I'm by no means a pianist. I think that's safe to say, but the piano, for me, I would say it's the enabler. It gave me what I needed and gives me what I need in order to write a song. And I think playing or improvising on the piano is where I feel most liberated and sort of less conscious of all my insecurities or inadequacies. — Laura Mvula

One of the young officers was playing a piano in the corner, although not all the men were singing the same song. — Sebastian Faulks

That evening I sat across from Jeremy Bulloch and Jacob at the dinner table. I watched as Jeremy, who seemed to speak Jacob's silent language fluently, drummed his fingers up and down on the edge of the table, as if playing a piano. A delighted Jacob mimicked the actor's actions. My throat filled with tears. I met Ben's eyes across the table, where he sat straight with pride next to his son. He was enjoying the show just as much as I was. Jacob was in his element, interacting with an actor from his favorite movie. The other men at the table were part of the set: Mike, the owner of the comic book store, who had made the entire thing possible, and the Mandalorin Mercs, new friends of the little boy who had
become one of their own, a comrade in distress. — Mary Potter Kenyon

My mom was in a band for over 30 years, and my brother, sister, and I start taking classical piano lessons when we were three. She's really the reason why I'm still playing piano - she made me practice every day before school and made it a priority even when we didn't necessarily want it to be. — Tess Henley