Quotes & Sayings About Playing

As a performing group, the Beatles began by playing old rock favorites, for dancing, to tough audiences in Liverpool and Hamburg. When they began writing seriously, they discovered that they couldn't compose in the early American rock tradition. — Jon Landau

He thinks of it as playing good cop/bad cop. Except we play bad gang member/worse gang member. — Simone Elkeles

The Story of My Life is drinking cups of tea, eating coco pops and playing Playstation. — Louis Tomlinson

Team playing, that's what I see when I'm out there watching the WNBA games. All the girls play as a team, and they have each other's backs, and that's great. — Keke Palmer

If I had my child to raise all over again,
I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I'd finger-paint more, and point the finger less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.
I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.
I'd do more hugging and less tugging. — Diane Loomans

It's much harder to play beloved than to play a rotten guy. Rotten guy is a piece of cake. So playing a beloved person really sets a high bar for your behavior and your acting and what you project. — Bill Murray

I've said that playing the blues is like having to be black twice. Stevie Ray Vaughan missed on both counts, but I never noticed. — B.B. King

Playing characters who are wonderful and beautiful is hard because you don't feel like that most of the time ... well, I don't. It's like this whole heart-throb nonsense. It's flattering, but that's not how I feel in the morning. It's something that goes with the job. — Hans Matheson

We will go back to playing like Manchester United. — Ryan Giggs

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

Jason had to bury his face against her shoulder to keep from laughing out loud. She was just so damn cute. "Stop laughing at me! I'm a threat, damn it!"
Jason pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. "No, you're my sweet little grasshopper. — R.L. Mathewson

The thing I learned from playing tennis is that I know what competition is. I can handle rejection. — Aaron Zigman

Playing other sports - and believe me, I played every sport I could - made me a better hockey player. — Tie Domi

I was playing violin for a long time, about 6 years. It takes a while. You need very patient people in your house when you have a violin. — Kevin Eubanks

It's interesting playing something that the audience doesn't fully know. — Guy Pearce

In school, I was playing old men and women, babies, Russian people, and all sorts of weird parts - a lot of comedy - and that's sort of like home to me. — Taylor Schilling

She had married him because she felt sage, because she'd had enough pain to last her a lifetime, and because although he had many faults, faults she was aware of before she married him, she knew he wouldn't hurt her.
She knew because there was no passion, and the only time she had felt passion, it had come with a price. — Jane Green

Playing dress up begins at age 5 and never really ends. — Kate Spade

I have toured with Klemens Marktl, playing his original compositions and arrangements. He is a wonderful drummer, a writer possessing a high degree of creativity, and an assured band leader. — Joe Locke

It was like she had been playing 'nhodo' with her life, foolishly trying to outsmart an imaginary playmate named Fate. — Panashe Chigumadzi

I think I'll just go take a shower, I said.
It wasn't until Samuel stiffened that I remembered I'd just come out of the shower. So much for playing normal. — Patricia Briggs

Parents bobble between a nostalgia-infused yearning for their children to play and fear that time spent playing is time lost to more practical pursuits. — Robin Marantz Henig

Playing for England was a massive honour and when I was in the team, that was all I wanted to focus on. — Mike Tindall

It's nice to worry about playing golf and not all the other stuff. — John Daly

We're playing for our lives now. — Bob Melvin

Now I know that there's no such thing as the truth. That people are constantly misquoted. That news organizations are full of conspiracy (and that, in any case, ineptness is a kind of conspiracy). That emotional detachment and cynicism get you only so far. But for many years I was in love with journalism. I loved the city room. I loved the pack. I loved smoking and drinking scotch and playing dollar poker. I didn't know much about anything, and I was in a profession where you didn't have to. I loved the speed. I loved the deadlines. I loved that you wrapped the fish. You can't make this stuff up, I used to say. — Nora Ephron

The greatest advantage in gambling lies in not playing at all. — Gerolamo Cardano

I love playing for people. — John Entwistle

It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way? — Richard Dawkins

Playing in the National Football League, you're told, you know, where to be, when to be there, what to wear, how to be there. Being able to step away from that, I have an opportunity to look deeper into myself and look for what's real. — Ricky Williams

There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counter-balance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films - the freedom to analyze their implications ... How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience? — Pauline Kael

But when you work with the director and the real person who is playing opposite you, it changes everything. You are almost in a working session. I was very comfortable, and that's maybe what helped me to get the part. — Olivier Martinez

A high-school teacher, after all, is a person deputized by the rest of us to explain to the young what sort of world they are living in, and to defend, if possible, the part their elders are playing in it — Emile Capouya

I have a very precise memory of the local train, the hot bricks and copper boxes filled with boiling water to warm us up. Someone in another compartment was playing the guitar. To the rhythm of the train's rocking movement, I heard the chorus "Porque yo to quiero, porque yo to quiero," and I traveled toward my Tonio telling myself, "Because I love you ... because I love you — Consuelo De Saint-Exupery

I'm really proud of the characters I've been able to play. Certainly, playing the character on 'CSI' as Dr. Sherman Hawkes is a wonderful stereotype-busting role. — Hill Harper

There is nothing nicer than playing someone who is cooler, tougher, more virtuous and sexier than yourself and thinking, 'I can be anyone.' — Jason Isaacs

To appear unambitious amongst the ambitious is to invite loathing or fear. To be in the game, but not playing with intent to win, is to be the enemy. — Josephine Hart

Great! I hope different police officers are here this time."
"Might be, but we're in the same police jurisdiction. I'm certain from the last time you were here, they probably have a record about you. What was it you said? You were playing some game re-enactment the last time you were injured?"
"Yes. How did your brother come up the idea of a paint-ball game? That's a good one."
"He's played them here before. He would like to bring the game back to our world, but we fight for real. — Terry Spear

For a short while she considered the idea of orchestral courtesy. Certainly one should avoid giving political offence: German orchestras, of course, used to be careful about playing Wagner abroad, at least in some countries, choosing instead German composers who were somewhat more ... apologetic. — Alexander McCall Smith

Now as the Paradisiacal pleasures of the Mahometans consist in playing upon the flute and lying with Houris, be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon. — Thomas Gray

Hairspray is the only movie I made that's subversive, because they're doing it in every high school in America. A man's playing a woman, and two men sing a love song to each other. — John Waters

Fishing tournaments seem a little like playing tennis with living balls ... — Jim Harrison

Persistence is a pretty important part of making it in this business, which, in retrospect, is the easy part. Maintaining a profile is the difficult part of the job. Somehow or another, I muddled through that system and somehow am around to still enjoy playing for people. — Chris Squire

I am impressed and distressed at how passive hierarchical organizations make people. There's often a lot of overt activity, but it's not going anywhere, it's game-playing. It's play-acting at work. — Judith M Bardwick

The Male Factor is the singularly best business book for women I've read in years. This well-researched yet thoroughly readable book is rich with rare insights into how men really see women in the workplace-and how with a few simple adjustments you can even the playing field. — Lois P Frankel

The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that's an inexhaustible one I'm sure. — Martin Rees

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

Part of the work is determining through what instrument you are playing. Actors are physical, olympian storytellers and we should be able to create entire landscapes with nothing. — Ajay Naidu

Defense to me is the key to playing baseball. — Willie Mays

To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder. — Keith Moon

Seriously. I'm not playing to prove anything to journalists. I'm playing for myself, for my fans,to make people happy. — Roger Federer

He's playing every bit as hard as I am, only he knows what he's doing and I don't. Don't blame me because he's a better manipulator than I am - I haven't been around long enough to learn all his tricks. — Stephenie Meyer

True success lies in knowing your weaknesses and playing to your strengths — Sophia Amoruso

I toyed with the idea of playing Ravel's 'Pavane pour une infante defunte' but I couldn't remember if it's a tune or Latin prescription for piles. — Les Dawson

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

If you keep performing, and if you stay healthy, you keep playing. — Joe Sakic

I don't plan on writing biographies of great sports stars who are still playing ball. But I did write one on Jackie Robinson, who was playing ball in the 20th century. — David A. Adler

I'm going to call me girls." Sadie stood in the open doorway and yelled. "Clare, Dora, I want yiz!" The cry went up, repeated over and over again as the children playing in the street outside passed the message along. Sadie waited, sure the message would eventually reach her two girls, where ever they were playing. It was an efficient message system used by every mother around the place. — Gemma Jackson

It's a funny thing. I'll be in my home town of Columbus at a restaurant or something, and the waiter maybe asks, 'What do you do?' and I say, 'Oh, I'm in a band ... Twenty One Pilots,' and he'll say, 'Cool, I'll check it out. I never heard of them.' And then I say, 'In September we're playing the Schottenstein Center,' and it's like, 'What?!' — Tyler Joseph

I started in theatre, and for me, it was all about transformation. You transform into the character that you're playing. — Rainn Wilson

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. This is all the more worrisome when we engage in deadly conflicts: wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do not know it). Owing to this misunderstanding of the causal chains between policy and actions, we can easily trigger Black Swans thanks to aggressive ignorance-like a child playing with a chemistry kit. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

You learn from playing against the best players and the best teams, and we're going to keep fighting and figuring out ways to beat them. — Scott Brooks

You have to remember that coaching wasn't sophisticated back then - you didn't have the camps, clinics and all the technical advances that are available today - so from that standpoint, playing with a cast on my arm was a fortunate event in my life. — Bob Cousy

On Sunday morning Mrs. Whitaker went to church. Her local church was St. James the Less, which was a little more "Don't think of this as a church, think of it as a place where like-minded friends hang out and are joyful" than Mrs. Whitaker felt entirely comfortable with, but she liked the vicar, the Reverend Bartholomew, when he wasn't actually playing the guitar. — Neil Gaiman

Anything you are shows up in your music - jazz is whatever you are, playing yourself, being yourself, letting your thoughts come through. — Mary Lou Williams

I am never going to please all 100 million people who read the book. I'll be lucky if half that number are happy with me playing Christian Grey. I know there are campaigns of hate against me already. — Jamie Dornan

If it's concerning immigration, do something on immigration, put your concerns on the President's actions and I'll vote on them. I'm not going to play politics and start playing around with the Homeland Security, there's no pressure that's going to change where I am. — Joe Manchin

What I am doing is not acting. I am playing myself. — Charlotte Rampling

Why have you not broken from the pack? You're playing it safe. Safe aint gonna get you sh!t in this world — Stone Cold Steve Austin

I remember when I was five playing tag with Cara and her brother. I accidentally got pushed into the side of her trampoline, and I bit the inside of my mouth. Blood gushed everywhere. Cara's mom held me until my parents came back. I didn't need stitches, but it was nasty. I roll my tongue over a small bump on the side of my mouth. Yep. It's still there. Real friendships have battle scars. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

With little wit and ease to suit them, They whirl in narrow circling trails, Like kittens playing with their tails. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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

Live by the creed that a strong work ethic, playing by the rules, and doing things the right way will bring about opportunities for success and, ultimately, happiness. — Nick Saban

Championship teams are built on being prepared, playing unselfishly and being held accountable — Jason Kidd

You know she needs you. Think for a minute instead of playing the wounded ego card.' - Derek — Stephanie Witter

You get very comfortable doing the open mic circuit, turning up to the same places and playing to 20 people. In that situation, it won't matter if you aren't great on that night because no one will really remember who you are. Then suddenly you are doing rooms to 400 people and you have to up your game. — Pippa Evans

Much of what I have learned, as well as much of my intellectual enjoyment, has come through problem solving. Through the years, I've found it more and more difficult to tell when I was working and when playing, for it has so often turned out that what I have learned playing with problems has been useful in my serious work. — Frederick Mosteller

I missed out on the Spice Girls. I missed out on all those big pop phenomenon and missed out even on the Madonna records. It's okay, cuz I'm playing catch-up on everything now. — Katy Perry

You can win tournaments when you're mechanical, but golf is a game of emotion and adjustment. If you're not aware of what's happening to your mind and your body when you're playing, you'll never be able to be the very best you can be. — Jack Nicklaus

Playing video games was all fine and well. When you were killed in a game, you just started again. In this Shadowrealm, though, there were no second chances, and a lot more ways to die. — Michael Scott

I played for anybody and everybody from the time I started playing guitar, when I was 10 or 11. — Janis Ian

When I'm not writing music, I'm playing guitar, or reading philosophy. So all I have left is just an hour or two for Claudia Schiffer. — Richard Pinhas

I was playing in bands before high school even. My first band I was in at 14. And we were playing just Beatles. — Dan Fogelberg

How can you go wrong with playing around on a superhero show? Just the way that they do things and watching them do their thing was amazing to me. Also, superheroes are awesome! — Bex Taylor-Klaus

My interests are guitars, cars, and vacation. I've been playing guitar all my life. My dad was a professional guitarist, but I'm terrible, which lets me off the hook, so I just play for myself. — Josh Hartnett

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I'm writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can. — Guy Clark

I got into theatre kinda late by some standards, and I sorta fell into it. I had broken my ankle playing football, and my high school was doing a production of 'Barnum.' I could juggle, and my mom really wanted to get me out of the house. She said since I wasn't playing football and couldn't wrestle, maybe I should audition for the show. — Colin Donnell

You're playing a character in a drama who happens to be based on someone who existed. It's never going to 'be' that person, but it's based on someone well-known, and you want to create enough of that person for it not to be a distraction. — Toby Jones

As an actor, acting is like playing a sport. You do this thing that's intangible, and while it's happening, it's great. But then when it's done, there's really no tangible product. Someone else is capturing it and turning it into something tangible. — Chris Evans

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

In a global arena, what our businessmen need in order to be competitive is transparency and a level playing-field. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

If you aren't practicing and playing to be first, then maybe you shouldn't be an entrepreneur. — Robert Kiyosaki

When we play, we sense no limitations. In fact, when we are playing, we are usually unaware of ourselves. Self-observation goes out the window. We forget all those past lessons of life, forget our potential foolishness, forget ourselves. We immerse ourselves in the act of play. And we become free. — Lenore Terr

James, that's a bad situation. I'm not saying it's not repairable, but it's pretty far. When you go from being in one of the best bands in the world to some cover band ... as far as I'm concerned, he was playing down at the pub. — Billy Corgan

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin. — Edmond De Goncourt

It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful. — Elvin Jones

Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside. — Jimmy Connors

When people say right person, wrong time, or wrong person, right time, it's usually a cop-out. They think that fate is playing with them. That we're all just participants in this romantic reality show that God gets a kick out of watching. But the universe doesn't decide what's right or not right. You do. Yes, you can theorize until you're blue in the face whether something might have worked at another time, or with someone else. But you know what that leaves you?" "Blue in the face?" I asked. "Yup. — Rachel Cohn

Probably like a couple of years from now, there'll be a lot of girls here, and then it won't be just like all boys, so they'll have to build like another dorm for girls, so it'll be a huge impact if more girls start playing. — Mo'ne Davis

My job playing Sam Malone was to let the audience in, to love my bar full of people. And that informed my life. — Ted Danson