Soprano Quotes & Sayings

Is he really so much like the monster James tracked across Siberia?"
Her eyes popped wide open, and then began flickering wildly from Edward to Seth to me, around and around.
"Not the same?" she snarled in her little girl's soprano. "Impossible! — Stephenie Meyer

Shortly after this I was made a member of the boys' choir, it being found that I possessed a clear, strong soprano voice. I enjoyed the singing very much. — James Weldon Johnson

We must regard Sarah Palin as the Carmella Soprano of the GOP
an enabling wife of organized crime, who sees, hears and speaks no evil of the boys in her old-boy network for whom she does this ideological lap dance. — Cintra Wilson

I had already been a young singer. And once, as a profession, I was a young singer, what you would call a soprano in England, but I was an alto in singing Jewish music in bar mitzvahs and weddings and synagogues throughout New York City because, after Israel, New York is probably the biggest Jewish community in the world. — Charlemagne Palestine

My interest in women's voices started when I was in the boys' choir and we were singing in opera choruses. That was my first close-up experience with the female soprano voice. I was amazed at how it could be within the same scale but so different in quality. — Alexander Chee

I love to sing. I'm a soprano. — Sara Paretsky

You can't sing baritone when you're a soprano. — Jim Crace

What I really want to do is create great roles for women. And I'm not talking Nicholas Sparks romance. I think women's roles have gotten ghettoized in these sort of places ... I'm thinking women in action, comic books, or like the Tony Soprano of women. We need some complex roles. — Melissa Rosenberg

I wasn't the best in my class at the Royal Academy. There was a really good soprano and baritone who were technically better and are doing really well in opera now. But I was definitely the best mezzo-soprano in my class, because I was the only one of those! — Katherine Jenkins

The tendency of modern American women to exclaim 'Hiiiiiiiiiiii!' in soprano octaves and hug each other upon sight can be disconcerting to those unfamiliar with it. — Kevin Hearne

Patrick West." Nick spoke so quietly the words were hardly more than a soft exhalation. "Student. Swimmer. Fan of lurid supernatural romances, €linore, and BadMadRad. Casual gamer. Admirer of Jaguar, fictional warrior princesses, and soprano witch queens. Lover of historical buildings. Idealist who wants to build cities where people can live well. Owner of strong opinions he never hesitates to defend, no matter how obviously wrong. Quick to laugh. Spontaneous and unselfconscious, except when he thinks too much, or tries too hard. Talks too much, with hardly any filter between the brain and the mouth. Adaptable. Outgoing. Unreserved. Loud. Talented. Whole-hearted. Foolhardy. Stronger than he thinks. Wiser than he seems. — Alex Gabriel

I've been working on the soprano saxophone for 40 years, and the possibilities are astounding. It's up to you, the only limit is the imagination. — Steve Lacy

Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week. — Rick Riordan

The warlords took part in atrocities during the civil war in Afghanistan. They looted, they raped, they killed. They have become incredibly empowered and entrenched. They live in mansions, they have jobs in the government, and they're incredibly powerful. In Kabul, people don't want to speak about it too publicly, because these people are essentially like Tony Soprano. — Khaled Hosseini

But the shadow settled on them, obliquely, and was shuffled off only when Danielle rose to put on music, a Spanish soprano singing Cantaloube, her pure, agonized strains floating, their minor harmonies wavering in the small room, as if to remind them both that beauty and loss were inseparably entwined. — Claire Messud

Love is private and primitive and a bit on the funky and frightening side. I think of the Luna card in the Tarot deck: some strange, huge crustacean, its armor glistening and its pinchers wiggling, clatters out of a pool while wild dogs howl at a bulging moon. Underneath the hearts and flowers, love is loony like that. Attempts to housebreak it, to refine it, to dress the crabs up like doves and make them sing soprano always result in thin blood. You end up with a parody. — Tom Robbins

The whole thing of singing on my own has been accidental and random. I sang a huge amount as a kid, and I was a boy soprano. I didn't do that much classical music; I did a little bit. I had a lovely voice. And then when my voice dropped, I didn't worry about it consciously because I wasn't that invested in my singing at the time. — Sam Amidon

I can spot a musical type. I can tell by looking at a woman whether she is a contralto or a soprano. — Walther Funk

The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body. — Stan Getz

I had four or five years in school training as a soprano. I fell into pop singing because of economics. I got out of high school and had to go work, and they weren't hiring opera singers. — Jo Stafford

Who the hell uses a burner cell phone when they're not trying to hide something? [..] Only dope dealers, and Hell's Angels, and Tony Soprano use burner cell phones. — Pat Martin

Nobody inspired me more than Julie Andrews, who is a classically trained soprano herself. — Lesley Garrett

Tall, black-haired, rouged, Kaiser-moustached, he cackled and screamed in weird attitudes, giggling in high soprano, hiding his little black teeth behind an exquisitely gloved hand - the 'poseur' absolute. He was said to have slept with Sarah Bernhard and vomited for a week afterwards. — William Sansom

Everything has become so pop-rock oriented that finding a role for a soprano, and finding an audience for a soprano, is tricky. Unless you're dealing with a revival, which is why I do so many revivals - because my specific tone and vocal quality lends itself to that type of writing. — Laura Benanti

My role is almost a sight-gag. I have to be a woman to sing the lyrics "I am a man" to have it be a joke. I start the lyric in a male-register and a whole coloratura up into a soprano. And other points in the show ... like the guy who likes to be treated like a baby and wear a diaper! — Max Von Essen

Opera was an enormous part of my childhood. My parents were both opera buffs, and they met in the box seat of an opera performance. And I also was a boy soprano, so before puberty hit, I was onstage playing a wide variety of orphans and urchins in all sorts of operas, and the sheer melodrama of their stories was just always appealing to me. — Daniel Handler

I'm a lyric soprano. I can try to step outside that and do different kind of singing, but it's not something I can sustain over the long haul, and what is good for your voice is good for your career. — Victoria Clark

I heard Sidney Bechet play a Duke Ellington piece and fell in love with the soprano saxophone. — Steve Lacy

Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and also mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song.
O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might. — Richard Llewellyn

Nobody was playing the soprano saxophone and certainly nobody was trying to do anything with it. So I was all alone. I didn't know that at first. — Steve Lacy

As I sit there flipping through a Sports Illustrated, listening to the easy-listening station Dr. Patel pumps into his waiting room, suddenly I'm hearing sexy synthesizer chords, faint highhat taps, the kick drum thumping out an erotic heartbeat, the twinkling of fairy dust, and then the evil bright soprano saxophone. You know the title: "Songbird." And I'm out of my seat, screaming, kicking chairs, flipping the coffee table, picking up piles of magazines and throwing them against the wall, yelling, "It's not fair! I won't tolerate any tricks! I'm not an emotional lab rat! — Matthew Quick

Part of their problem was Percy. He fought like a demon, whirling through the defenders' ranks in a completely unorthodox style, rolling under their feet, slashing with his sword instead of stabbing like a Roman would, whacking campers with the flat of his blade, and generally causing mass panic. Octavian screamed in a shrill voice - maybe ordering the First Cohort to stand their ground, maybe trying to sing soprano - but Percy put a stop to it. He somersaulted over a line of shields and slammed the butt of his sword into Octavian's helmet. The centurion collapsed like a sock puppet. Frank — Rick Riordan

Now, darlin', you know that social etiquette is bred into us Southern girls." "Oh, please. You're as Southern as Tony Soprano." Mama sniffed. "I swear, I should have left you by the side of the road in Wheeling, West Virginia." "You did leave me there. — Kristin Hannah

I really wanted to be an opera soprano. — Maureen O'Hara

Coincidentally the couple who had endowed it had lived in her parents' building. They had had an eight-year-old with a pretty singing voice who drowned at a Maine summer camp. "You can't imagine what happened," said Sarah, but of course Rebecca could imagine. Being a boy soprano had a shorter shelf life than being a supermodel. She could almost see it as Sarah went on and on, the boy with the pale blue eyes, insensible to the hormones coursing through his body as he stood on the stage at Alice Tully Hall. Apparently his choir director had chosen "Old Man River," sung not in the bass range made famous by Paul Robeson, or in the dialect in which it had been written, but in a high register with crisp consonants. (To be fair to the choir director, he had never — Anna Quindlen

I was champion soprano of Sussex when I was 16! — Lesley Manville

It was just as shocking for me to sing opera in a falsetto soprano in Germany. — Klaus Nomi

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

And the true inspiration, the sparkling grace note of genius that brings his masterpiece to life, is the soprano counterpoint: a syncopated sequence of exterior hatches in the outer hull sliding open and closed and open again, subtly altering the aerodynamics of the ship to give it just exactly the amount of sideslip or lift or yaw to bring the huge half cruiser into the approach cone of a pinpoint target an eighth of the planet away. — Matthew Woodring Stover

There're lots of musicians in my family, too. My mother sings incredibly well. I've got to make a record with my mother's voice on it. She sings a lyric soprano. We do the opposite. I'm a baritone. She's a star singer in her church. She always does her solo. — Grace Jones

The soprano turned out to sound to me like the right hand on the piano. — Steve Lacy

My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.
These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

A couple of inches up and right and he would have been a soprano. — J.R. Ward

I hardly ever belted; I was a soprano and a comedienne and intended on doing mostly soprano legit roles but my first equity show, to my surprise, was Blues in The Night at The Cleveland Playhouse. — Erica Schroeder

The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity. — Steve Lacy

The gold-seekers began to work out what the main characters were like. They sketched out dramatis personae such as:

UGOLIN: A grand master of the Fascist Order (bass)
ALFONSINA: His daughter (coloratura soprano)
COMRADE MITIN: A Soviet inventor (baritone)
SFORZA: A fascist prince (tenor)
GAVRILA: A Soviet Young Communist (mezzo-soprano dressed as a man)
NINA: A Young Communist and daughter of a priest (lyric soprano) — Ilya Ilf

Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order in this country. — John F. Kerry

I tried to catch the eye of everyone around me who wasn't a soprano I. I get it. First sopranos don't feel this. You hear it, but you don't feel it. You don't know that those lowly peasants making a nice vocal cushion for you to step on had parts that were every bit as rapturous as yours — Stacy Horn

He was trying to be everywhere at once," the redhead told the human. "Trying to make sure Alice had nothing to do, actually." He shook his head as he looked at the tiny blackhaired girl. "Alice doesn't need anyone's help." The vampire named Alice shot a glare at Jasper. "Overprotective fool," she said in her clear soprano voice. Jasper met her stare with a half smile, seeming to forget for a second that I existed. — Stephenie Meyer

Got one," P.J. called. "Motherfucker is ball-less and singing soprano."

"Jesus, that woman is vicious," Joe muttered.

"That's our girl," Renshaw called back smugly. — Maya Banks

The sirens droned on, a soprano counterpoint to the bombs' relentless bass, their pitch so eerily human it sounded like every soul in London had taken to their rooftops to cry out collective despair. — Ransom Riggs

I can hit baritone notes, and I can sing in the soprano range if I wanted to. I did this thing a long time ago where I did a duet with myself. I sound like two different people. — Shamir

I was a boy soprano. I had a natural kind of voice and then trained it after my voice changed. — Len Cariou

As a boy soprano in the high school choir, I later sang a solo during the carol service at Canterbury Cathedral, but I was too young to secure the Freddy Eynsford-Hill role in our production of 'My Fair Lady' - and far too timid to have thought to audition for it. — Hamish Bowles

Everyone knows that when advancing into danger, the soprano goes first. They are your infantry, while the altos and tenors are your cavalry, and the bass your artillery. — Rick Riordan

We often take these social rituals for granted, but we do so at our own peril. They are more fragile than we think. Like fine crystal, they break easily and are hard to glue back together. — Carmela Soprano

I was regarded by my parents as having little musical talent other than a thin, nasal soprano voice. I was forbidden to touch my father's clarinets or saxophones, just my harmonica. — Pete Townshend

A basso sings, and a soprano answers him.
Then there is thunder in a clear blue sky,
And, from the earth, a sigh: This song is finished. — Kenneth Koch

I try whistling to fill in the silence. The soprano sax from Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," though of course my dubious whistling doesn't come anywhere near the complex, lightning-quick original. I just add bits so what I hear in my head approximates the sound. Better than nothing, I figure. — Haruki Murakami

You got to play the flute as a flute, like that. You can't play like a tenor concept on soprano; it sounds wrong. But some guys do it, and they think it's O.K., but not so! — Jerome Richardson

My high-school a cappella teacher would embarrass me in front of the choir. 'Mavis, you're in the basement. Mavis, you're singing with the boys.' I said, 'Mr. Finch, my voice isn't soprano. I can't sing up there with the girls.' So I just got out of the choir. — Mavis Staples

The girl in your class who suggests that this year the Drama Club put on The Bald Soprano will be a thorn in people's sides all of her life. — Fran Lebowitz

Maybe there would be a bad outcome for some of the others, but no one was going to shoot a soprano. — Ann Patchett

The cello is a hero because of its register - its tenor voice. It is a masculine instrument, whereas the violin is feminine because of its soprano pitch. When the cello enters in the Dvorak Concerto, it is like a great orator. — Mstislav Rostropovich

Day's heart clenched. God didn't want to just fuck him; he wanted to make love to him. Damn, it'd felt like ages since Day had done that. Not since college if he were being honest with himself. He'd loved his college sweetheart, but they'd never actually got to the lovemaking part, since his college sweetheart was straight. But now he'd have the chance. Day reclined, letting the soft soprano sounds of the saxophone add to his euphoria. He — A.E. Via

There was some rustling as the gown was cast over the soprano's shoulders, or so Lina assumed, and then the alto and Madame Rocque started cooing.
But the soprano cut through it decisively. 'I look like an orange without its rind,' she said firmly. — Eloisa James

Opera is when a tenor and soprano want to make love, but are prevented from doing so by a baritone. — George Bernard Shaw

I am a confused Musician who got sidetracked into this goddamn Word business for so long that I never got back to music - except maybe when I find myself oddly alone in a quiet room with only a typewriter to strum on and a yen to write a song. Who knows why? Maybe I just feel like singing - so I type.
These quick electric keys are my Instrument, my harp, my RCA glass-tube microphone, and my fine soprano saxophone all at once. That is my music, for good or ill, and on some nights it will make me feel like a god. Veni, Vidi, Vici ... That is when the fun starts ... — Hunter S. Thompson

I have talents that I'm not supposed to have: I can tell who crushes on who by how they stand, I can read strides, I can hear the tonal differences between an alto and a soprano singing the same line so clearly that to me they sing entirely different notes, and I can read through the lines and tell when a person doesn't need to be writing at all. That, that is what makes me a snob, because I cannot abide a person putting pen to paper or fingers on keys when they don't need to, when word choice is not as relevant and demanding and essential to them as breathing and syntax is about being correct and not about being evocative. — Julia Bascom

The song was "I See the Light", another Tangled number. Aaron sang the male part of the duet, and Walter's friend Rose did a less-than-Mina soprano, but mostly the music fell away in the brilliant presence of the two young men on the dance floor. — Heidi Cullinan

I look into his eyes and see myself reflected there, smiling up at him. I'm ready to hear all about it. in bass and soprano. In songs of longing and love. In our voices, braided like the strongest cord.

I take off running up the trail, Will on my heels, the whole world waiting for us at the top of the ridge.

I'm ready to fly through the door and back again.
I'm ready to sing to the wind." -Amber — Jaye Robin Brown

It's a crazy soprano, and singing as a man as a woman. But for many years, I was on the road in Chicago as Mary Sunshine, so I can do that. I didn't think there was any way I was going to get it - it was so far out of my comfort-zone. — Max Von Essen

My mother had a great voice. Not like mine, not like my sister's, not like my son's - a high soprano voice, but like a bird. I mean, really beautiful. — Barbra Streisand

A soprano's voice is a little like a mother's cry, which is why it attracts all human beings. — Montserrat Caballe

I must be the oldest living child soprano. — Kathryn Grayson

And like a soprano shattering glass, Juliet heard something snap deep inside.
It was the sound of her heart breaking. — Alexandra Potter

I certainly know all about the Jersey jokes that amuse the rest of the country. You've probably heard them. Our state bird is the mosquito. Our state tree is dead. It doesn't help that we are represented on television by Tony Soprano and 'Jersey Shore.' — Sharon Kay Penman

I'm a mezzo-soprano, so the whole diva thing ... I'm not the kind of performer who puts on a persona off-stage as well, and the days of arriving with steamer trunks and hat boxes are over. — Joyce DiDonato

She was the right girl at the right time. She had only a small repertory of Child ballads, never trained her pure soprano and annoyed some purists because she was indifferent to the origins of her material and sang everything 'sad'. — Joan Didion

As a soprano who sings 'Lucia di Lammermoor,' I have the high notes and the trills. No problems there. But going into the low registers is lots of work. — Anna Netrebko

Taita,' she called to me, 'sing with me!' And when I obeyed she smiled with pleasure. My voice was one of the many reasons that, whenever she was able, she kept me near her; my tenor complemented her lovely soprano to perfection. We sang one of the old peasant love songs that I had taught her, and which was still one of her favourites: My heart flutters up like a wounded quail when I see my beloved's face and my cheeks bloom like the dawn sky to the sunshine of his smile — Wilbur Smith

Directors didn't know what to do with me in college. I didn't really sound like a belter. I didn't look like a soprano. But in New York, I was in the right place at the right time, where my unusualness fit the bill. — Jessie Mueller

A soprano in Massenet's Don Quixote complained that she had missed her entry in the aria, "because Mr. Challiapin always dies too soon." "Madam, you must be profoundly in error," said Sir Thomas, "No operatic star has yet died half soon enough for me." — Thomas Beecham

The wait deep water was so cold I imagined I'd be singing soprano for the rest of the week. — Rick Riordan

I know it was a gift from God. My father was a preacher and my mother worked in churches all her life. My father had a very deep bass sounding voice and my mother had an in-between soprano voice. Not great singers, but they had great tones to their voices. I think that had a lot to do with it. Also, I really believe my voice was a gift from God. I believe if you take care of it, He will help you take care of it. — Darlene Love

He was like a worn small rock whelmed by the successive waves of his voice. With his body he seemed to feed that voice that, succubus like, had fleshed its teeth in him. And the congregation seemed to watch with its own eyes while the voice consumed him, until he was nothing and they were nothing and there was not even a voice but instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures beyond the need for words, so that when he came to rest again against the reading desk, his monkey face lifted and his whole attitude that of a serene, tortured crucifix that transcended its shabbiness and insignificance and made it of no moment, a long moaning expulsion of breath rose from them, and a woman's - woman's single soprano: Yes, Jesus! — William Faulkner

Pulled out my Valery Gergiev trump card and said I would have to call him about getting another hotel. There are many ways in which a soprano relies upon the guidance of a conductor, and not all of them are confined to the stage. As a result of dropping the most powerful name in Russian music today, I got a window and a view. — Renee Fleming

If we put a gun to her head she would sing all day. Try it first with a bird, General Benjamin said gently to Alfredo. Like our soprano, they have no capacity to understand authority. The bird doesn't know enough to be afraid and the person holding the gun will only end up looking like a lunatic. — Ann Patchett

Belief in oneself is a crucial quality of leadership, because 'a house divided against itself cannot stand.' A leader who fluctuates back and forth sends a very wavery signal. Like the soprano who can shatter glass by finding that high note and holding it, a leader who can hold that high note, without wavering, can shatter walls. — Laurie Beth Jones

Somewhere along the line Coltrane's soprano sax runs out of steam. Now it's McCoy Tyner's piano solo I hear, the left hand carving out a repetitious rhythm and the right layering on thick, forbidding chords. Like some mythic scene, the music portrays somebody's - a nameless, faceless somebody's - dim past, all the details laid out as clearly as entrails being dragged out of the darkness. Or at least that's how it sounds to me. The patient, repeating music ever so slowly breaks apart the real, rearranging the pieces. It has a hypnotic, menacing smell, just like the forest. — Haruki Murakami

The dwarfs were staring at Lady Sybil as she changed up through the gears into full, operatic voice. For an amateur soprano she had an impressive delivery and range, a touch too wobbly for the professional stage but exactly the kind of high coloratura to impress the dwarfs. Snow — Terry Pratchett

Why was there never an opera that ended with a soprano who was free? — Alexander Chee

In my mind these two instruments speak to me in different ways, and the solo stuff seems to be easier to do on the soprano. — Evan Parker

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

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. ... It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see. — Ann Patchett

I feel most spiritual when I am listening to a soprano voice soaring to the top of its range at the most dramatic point of an aria. It feels like a geyser shooting up from the center of the earth and reaching for the stars. — China Forbes

It's great to hear someone really care for the soprano saxophone. — Rufus Reid

I remember at the age of, and I'll say this, 10 and a half, 11, I had a natural boy soprano. — Anthony Warlow