Quartet Quotes & Sayings

I got it into my head that I had somewhat neglected the guitar, and then I did a record called 'Arena,' and it was not a particularly bad record - it wasn't a bad record at all, but it was built around a certain concept, which is a guitar quartet, with a little bit of augmentation here and there. — Todd Rundgren

A noble space, unlike any other of our time, for it is both strong and delicate. It seems to call at once for a Boeing 747 and for a string quartet. — Paul Goldberger

And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even. — Elvis Costello

Homura-chan, you know I could never do anything that would make you cry. — Magica Quartet

I'll tell you what I would do in a shot if I could. I would sing in the barbershop quartet in The Music Man. — Ned Beatty

After two hours it stopped raining and in the same moment the spell broke, which Peroquet and the Admiral and Captain Jumeau knew by a curious twist of their senses, as if they had tasted a string quartet, or been, for a moment, deafened by the sight of colour blue. — Susanna Clarke

The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost. — Bennett Cerf

I prefer a quartet, it makes everyone work harder. — Adrian Belew

As a quartet, they struck an unmusical note, primarily the fault of Ybarra-Jaega, who seemed as out of place in their company as a violin in a jazz band. — Truman Capote

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet. — Jeffrey Tate

Laurel: I don't need a ring or a license, or a spetacular white dress. It's not marriage so much, or at all really, that matters. It's the promise. It's the knowing someone wants me to be part of his life. Someone loves me, that I'm the one for him. That's not just enough, it's everything. — Nora Roberts

My dad graduated seminary there, and so did (sounds like) Mark Kimball's grandfather. They sang in a quartet together, my dad and Mark Kimball's grandfather. — Al Jarreau

I walked forward simply because there was no going back. — Emma Raveling

To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group
a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. — Cornel West

Every symphony, for example, is a sonata for orchestra; every string quartet is a sonata for four strings; every concerto a sonata for a solo instrument and orchestra. — Aaron Copland

The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece. — Elliott Carter

Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest. — Victor Hugo

And then that happened, the quartet striding through a cheering city that parted as they passed. Dorothy's hair blowing on the breeze, Toto cradled in her arm like a small bomb made of poor choices. The lion fixed many with his yellow cat eyes and the faces of incredulous Ozians were reflected in the chest of the tin man, slipping off like mercury as he went by. The scarecrow pointed his mitten hands at a few ladies, blowing small bits of straw in their general direction.
'Another One Bites the Dust' played loud and hard.
It was fucking sweet. — Eric Sennevoight

We were a quartet of idiots trying to look suave. — Philippa Gregory

Anyways, the guys try to be cool. They just lie there and groove, but after a while they start hearing - you won't believe this - they hear chamber music. They hear violins and cellos. They hear this terrific mama-san soprano. Then after a while they hear gook opera and and a glee club and the Haiphong Boys Choir and a barbershop quartet and and all kinds of wierd chanting and Buddha-Buddha stuff. All the whole time, in the background, there's stil that cocktail party going on. All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it's the mountains. Follow me? The rock, it's TALKING. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monnkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam - it truly TALKS. — Tim O'Brien

My grandmother would sing in the choir, while my dad - while he was in college - sang and recorded with a quartet. So yeah, it was definitely my dad's Southern side that impacted on me musically. — Keri Hilson

When I was drawing this, I thought I'd put together Sailor Saturn and Sailor Chibi-Moon in a pair. Then I followed it with the Sailor Quartet. One of these days I'm going to put this team together into the manga. What a weird thing that would be. Anyway, here's the six. — Naoko Takeuchi

My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time. — Bjork

Yet he moved toward her, darkly shimmering out of the library shadows with feeding fangs ready. However, the moment he touched Miss Tarabotti, he was suddenly no longer darkly doing anything at all. He was simply standing there, the faint sounds of a string quartet in the background as he foolishly fished about with his tongue for fangs unaccountably mislaid. — Gail Carriger

Madoka: Won't anyone notice that Mami-san is dead?
Homura: Mami Tomoe's only relatives are distant relations. It will be quite some time before anyone files a missing persons report. When one dies on that side of the wards, not even a body is left behind. She'll wind up forever a "missing person" ... That is what happens to magical girls in the end.
Madoka: ... That's too cruel! Mami-san has been fighting all alone for a long time for everyone's sake! For no one to even notice that she's gone ... That's just too lonely a fate ...
Homura: It is just that kind of contract that gives us the power in the first place. It isn't for anyone else's sake. We fight on for the sake of our own prayer. So for no one to notice ... for the world to forget us ... That is just something we have to accept. — Magica Quartet

The question who ought to be boss is like who ought to be the tenor in the quartet? Obviously, the man who can sing tunor. — Henry Ford

My grandfather was in a barbershop quartet and my grandmother was in a gospel quartet with her sisters. — Kevin Richardson

I have been thinking about the girl I met last night in the mirror: dark on the marble-ivory white: glossy black hair: deep suspiring eyes in which one's glances sink because they are nervous, curious, turned to sexual curiosity. — Lawrence Durrell

In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art
the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases
beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden. — Anne Rice

I love working with the quartet. I have more freedom and flexibility. — Boz Scaggs

I have always loved jazz music and as a teen growing up in New York City and then later on as an adult have great memories of the jazz clubs that were all located on 52nd Street. I still catch as many jazz shows as I can when I am in New York. And when I perform, I have my jazz quartet by my side. Jazz musicians keep things spontaneous and very "live," which is the way I like to perform. — Tony Bennett

'Shantaram' is the second in the series of a quartet of novels that I have planned about my life but is the first to be written. The third book is a sequel to 'Shantaram,' the first a prequel. — Gregory David Roberts

Kyubey: ... Oh, geez. I never would have thought you capable of throwing your friend off a bridge. That wasn't a sane act, Madoka! — Magica Quartet

Lend your ear then to this tutti of steeples; diffuse over the whole the buzz of half a million of human beings, the eternal murmur of the river, the infinite piping of the wind, the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed like immense organs on the four hills of the horizon; soften down, as with a demi-tint, all that is too shrill and too harsh in the central mass of sound, and say if you know any thing in the world more rich, more gladdening, more dazzling than that tumult of bells; than that furnace of music; than those ten thousand brazen tones breathed all at once from flutes of stone three hundred feet high; than that city which is but one orchestra; than that symphony rushing and roaring like a tempest. — Victor Hugo

I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it! — Arnold Schoenberg

Growing up in the Bay Area, I played early on with these quartet groups who set guidelines for me. I remember the guys would all have the same clothes and shoes, like these uniforms. I was in awe. — Raphael Saadiq

A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins. — Laurie Colwin

Just as with the quartet, each part of a painting is telling a different story. — Guido Molinari

Junko: Your life doesn't belong to you alone... — Magica Quartet

The Vores Third Quartet is a terrific piece that brings disparate components into harmony ... it's celebratory, imaginative, touching, and fun. — Richard Dyer

Best listened to in a windowless room, better than best in an airless room - correctly speaking, a bunker sealed forever and enwrapped in tree-roots - the Eighth String Quartet of Shostakovich (Opus 110) is the living corpse of music, perfect in its horror. Call it the simultaneous asphyxiation and bleeding of melody. The soul strips itself of life in a dusty room. — William T. Vollmann

Every small town has its dramatic group, its barber-shop quartet, every home has music in one form or another. — Kate Smith

Kyubey: Why do you humans place so much value on housing your souls inside your bodies? It's a complete mystery to me. — Magica Quartet

My great hero is Billie Holiday, and I've always wanted to do an album of standards with a piano-led quartet. — Tim Curry

Madoka: I think it's because of your wish to protect me all this time that I am what I am now. And it's that "me" who has finally found an answer. So please ... trust me. — Magica Quartet

I
" She swallowed, perhaps summoning her courage, then continued, "I would not lie to you and say that I did not want this."
"Me," he cut in peevishly. "You wanted me."
She closed her eyes. "Yes," she finally said, "I wanted you."
Part of him wanted to interrupt again, to remind her that she still wanted him, that it wasn't and would never be in the past.
"But I can't have you," she said quietly, "and because of that, you can't have me."
And then, to his complete astonishment, he asked, "What if I married you? — Julia Quinn

We do not need them. They would hinder rather than help our praise. Sing unto him. This is the sweetest and best music. No instrument like the human voice. What a degradation to supplant the intelligent song of the whole congregation by the theatrical prettiness of a quartet, bellows, and pipes! We might as well pray by machinery as praise by it. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I would like to hear Elliot Carter's Fourth String Quartet, if only to discover what a cranky prostate does to one's polyphony. — James Sellars

I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet. — Joshua Bell

Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we - I mean all human beings - are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself. — Virginia Woolf

'Something/Anything?' was kind of a different record, since I'm playing everything myself. A lot of the songs on there have a particular kind of instrumentation that is much like a guitar quartet, and in some ways, it's an exceptional song on that record because so much of the writing on 'Something/Anything?' is piano-oriented. — Todd Rundgren

Dresden was destroyed on the night of February 13, 1945," Billy Pilgrim began. "We came out of our shelter the next day." He told Montana about the four guards who, in their astonishment and grief, resembled a barbershop quartet. He told her about the stockyards with all the fenceposts gone, — Kurt Vonnegut

Nexa asked me to check up on you," Tristan said dryly. "Just in case you were thinking of doing something ... impulsive."
"That's ridiculous." My eyes followed Amber's back as she walked away . "I've been wanting to kick her ass for awhile, so it wouldn't have been impulsive. More like premeditated."
Raveling, Emma (2011-09-16). Whirl (Ondine Quartet Book 1) (p. 95). Mandorla Publishing. Kindle Edition. — Emma Raveling

We understood nothing at all. Not what it meant to wish for a miracle ... nor its price. — Magica Quartet

It is unlikely you will truly get the feeling of the violin until you have been studying for at least a year -- perhaps even two. Then one day the sheer pleasure of playing the instrument will suddenly flow over you. Perhaps it will be when you hear a fine string quartet. Maybe the revelation will come at the concert of an outstanding string orchestra, or better yet, when you are asked to sit in one made of boys and girls your own age. In any case, you will hear the singing strings clearly -- perhaps for the first time -- as the pure, jubilant spirit of music. — Bill Ballantine

When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all. — Steve Lacy

I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet. — Al Jarreau

On one hand you have a string quartet, which is not a symphony. On the other hand is you have me sampling them and making it sound like there is many more people playing, so the whole notion of, kind of, sampling applied to classical music is very intriguing to me because composers throughout history have borrowed motifs and quotes from one another. — DJ Spooky

I have learned a lot from jazz. I compare good acting to jazz music. The more you study and prepare as an actor, the more equipped you are to live in the moment. Just like the gifted musicians in my dad's quartet, it takes a courageous actor to be free. — Nat Wolff

A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description. — William James

The magical encounter with the Beethoven quartet, the Bach suite, the Brahms symphony, in which your whole being is gripped by melodic and harmonic ideas and taken on a journey through the imaginary space of music - that experience which lies at the heart of our civilisation and which is an incomparable source of joy and consolation to all those who know it - is no longer a universal resource. It has become a private eccentricity, something that a dwindling body of oldies cling to, but which is regarded by many of the young as irrelevant. Increasingly young ears cannot reach out to this enchanted world, and therefore turn away from it. The loss is theirs, but you cannot explain that to them, any more than you can explain the beauty of colours to someone who is congenitally blind. — Roger Scruton

Maybe there are stories, even, like solitaire or canasta; they are shuffled and dealt, then they do or they do not come out. Or the deck falls on the floor. Or a piece of country music, a quartet, a parade, the flag - all the things one ought by now to be too old for - touch, whatever it is. — Renata Adler

Industry, economy, honesty, and kindness form a quartet of virtues that will never be improved upon. — James Oliver

Amah would not have approved of her meekly standing aside, twisting her hands as if she had no more resources than those girls who hung themselves without first exacting any retribution from their heartless lovers.
He would not get away with it.
She walked, like an automaton, to her horse. Her fingers dug out the jar of salve, but left behind the pilules that must be taken while one used the salve. He was already mounted when she approached him.
A quartet of birds trilled raucously as she presented the jar to him. Perhaps they were trying to warn him. Or her.
'Here, a parting gift,' she said softly. — Sherry Thomas

I'd rather waltz than just walk through the forest
The trees keep the tempo and they sway in time
Quartet of crickets chime in for the chorus
If I were to pluck on your heartstrings, would you strum on mine? — Owl City

Kyubey: You have no idea how much difficulty we go through trying to understand your human values. Presently there are six billion, eight hundred million of you, and you're increasing in number by a hundred every four minutes! What's the huge fuss over the death of each and every single creature?
Madoka: If that's how you think of us, then yes, I see you are our enemy. — Magica Quartet

An evening up on the Empire State roof-the strangest experience. The huge tomb in steel and glass, the ride to the 84th floor and there, under the clouds, a Hawaiian string quartet, lounge, concessions and, a thousand feet below, New York-a garden of golden lights winking on and off, automobiles, trucks winding in and out, and not a sound. All as silent as a dead city-and it looks adagio down there. — Dawn Powell

When I was seven years old, I was leading a quartet and trio, and that really laid the groundwork for me as a musician. — Anne Akiko Meyers

I know of musicians who have played together for decades who hate each other. The Modern Jazz Quartet for one. — Gary Burton

In the cave's innermost entryway, a band of four stood tall and thick, shouldered and heavily weaponed.
Members of the Brotherhood.
He knew this quartet by name: Ahgony, Throe, Murhder, Tohrture. — J.R. Ward

And a quartet of fuzzy post-nuclear mutants were showing each other strange alien porn on the televisions they had implanted in their stomachs. — Simon R. Green

Miki-san ... do you truly want that person's dream to come true? Or is it that you want to be that person's savior for making that dream come true? If you're going to fulfill someone else's dream, that's the time when it's most important to be sure you know your own wish. The two might seem the same, but they're entirely different. — Magica Quartet

Once a month I play with a chamber music quartet. I play almost no solo music anymore because I so enjoy the interaction. The members of my quartet have become some of my best friends and so I really enjoy it now in ways that I didn't before. — Condoleezza Rice

Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember her, you are not alone. — Magica Quartet

I am touring in Europe. I am putting together a trio and a quartet. I am playing solo concerts with my symphonic sounds. I am very much engaged back to playing and recording and everything. — Miroslav Vitous

He wished he were home in Charleston, listening to the Dave Brubeck Quartet on the stereo and reading Bruce Catton. — Dan Simmons

Solo dancing does not exist: the dancer dances with the floor: add another dancer and you have a quartet: each dance with the other and each with the floor. — Steve Paxton

How could a New Yorker possibly take something called the Hollywood String Quartet seriously? — Leonard Slatkin

Women and men in scrubs swept into the room and checked the monitors and the bags. They strode out, nodded at the quartet slumped in chairs against the wall, and scuffed down the hall. Nurses changed shifts, moved the life of the place along while patients and visitors waited frozen, locked into little boxes of concern and fear.
The strange hours of the pre-dawn arrived, when the hospital hushed even as the business of sickness and death ground on. — Scott Archer Jones

My first strong musical memory is of the Villa-Lobos Sixth Quartet which my parents were rehearsing. I remember that it reminded me of big teddy bears dancing around. — Leonard Slatkin

I'm the fifth generation of Seventh Day Adventists and the youngest of four brothers. When I was still very small, we formed a gospel quartet. — Brian McKnight

You can play Bach on the piano, a symphony orchestra or a quartet of saxophones, but let's stop this silly, childish business of knit your own musicology — Paul McCreesh

Music just runs in my family. My dad and my uncles are a gospel quartet, Latimore Brothers. They've been doing their thing ever since I was a kid, so I just kind of grew up around that. — Jacob Latimore

You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don't. — Branford Marsalis

I've got a better idea," says my mother. "Tell me about what you did today. Tell me about New York." So I do, I tell the lifelong New Yorker who chucked it for the woods about the streets of the city: how the subway was so crowded this morning I had to let four trains pass in a row and I was a half hour late to work; how I had a meeting in Times Square and I saw an army of painted topless women posing with tourists for money; how I saw two people dressed up as Disney characters get into a fistfight; how I ate a hot dog from a stand after my client meeting bombed and when I finished it I ate another, on one of the chairs scattered in Bryant Park. A string quartet was playing nearby, under a sponsor banner. "The music part was the part that saved me," I say. "All of it would have saved me," says my mother. — Jami Attenberg

The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a "soundless music". It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony. — You Jin

Some tracks are with quartet and some tracks are with synthesizer. — Charlie Haden

My family was very encouraging, and both of my grandparents were both beautiful singers. My grandmother was a coloratura soprano, and my grandfather was an Irish tenor in a barbershop quartet. — Clare Bowen

And since I'm marrying into the Quartet, I have certain privileges and duties. If you're sleeping with Laurel - "
"I'm not sleeping with Laurel. We're dating."
"Right, and the two of you are just going to hold hands, admire the moon, and sing camp songs."
"For a while. Minus the singing. — Nora Roberts

I got a chance to listen to and watch Thelonious Monk and his quartet play two shows a night, for six weeks. It was a great education. There was my university, man. — Chick Corea

Endings do not exist. There are only choices leading to other paths. — Emma Raveling

There was a time when Stone would have rated a platoon of crackerjack killers coming for him by land, sea and air. Those days apparently were over. A quartet of suits in a Cadillac on steroids was enough. — David Baldacci

Not feeling bad for others means having no regrets. — Magica Quartet

One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you sign on to something, there will be issues of trust, deep trust, the way the members of a string quartet have to trust one another. — Yo-Yo Ma

My dad used to sing in a quartet. He loved everything: adult contemporary, anything smooth. He'd listen to the quartets. — Keri Hilson

Our dreams are fluid, just as we are. They change as we change. — Emma Raveling

In our local Baptist church, I sang in the choir and formed a gospel quartet. When our minister caught me messing with his guitar, he taught me three positions - one, four and five. After that, I taught myself to play. — B.B. King

He had realised that most vital of humanities. he had touched lives.
And he had raised three boys that no one had wanted into men. — Nora Roberts

Look at all the Eastern writers who've written great Western literature. Kazuo Ishiguro. You'd never guess that The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go were written by a Japanese guy. But I can't think of anyone who's ever done the reverse
any Westerner who's written great Eastern literature. Well, maybe if we count Lawrence Durrell - does the Alexandria Quartet qualify as Eastern literature?"
"There is a very simple test," said Vikram. "Is it about bored, tired people having sex?"
"Yes," said the convert, surprised.
"Then it's western. — G. Willow Wilson

Ut she didn't understand and couldn't accept using that unhappiness as an excuse or rationale for being unfaithful. why didn't people just end it? if they wanted someone else, or something else, why not break it off clean first instead of cheating, lying, tolerating, just existing? — Nora Roberts