Quotes & Sayings About Violinist

How is it that artists keep their powers of perception even in the days when life darkens? he asked himself. Thinking about it and taking as his model Grandfather, an artist in religion who had given to its study the devotion and the hours of discipline that a violinist devotes to his instrument, he thought that their perception was born of the faculty of wonder, deepening to meditation and to penetrating sight and so strong that it could last out a lifetime. Grandfather wondered, all day and every day, at the wisdom of God and the beauty of the world, and Ferranti had wondered at the waste and pain and frustration of life. — Elizabeth Goudge

Drugs and sex go hand in hand when you're a rock and roll musician. Whereas if I were a violinist, it might be a little different. — Slash

Mrs. Jones had invited a great and well-known violinist to entertain at her afternoon tea. When it was all over, everyone crowded around the musician. "I've got to be honest with you," one of the guests said, "I think your performance was absolutely terrible." Hearing his criticism, the hostess interposed: "Don't pay any attention to him. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He only repeats what he hears everyone else say." I'm — John C. Maxwell

I called the great French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and I said 'So, who's the new cat? Who's got the stuff? And he said Zach Brock. — Stanley Clarke

Without even knowing it, we are assaulted by a high note of urgency all the time. We end up pacing ourselves to the city rhythm whether or not it's our own. In time we even grow hard of hearing to the rest of the world. Like a violinist stuck next to the timpani, we may lose the ability to hear our own instrument. — Ellen Goodman

When you battle with your conscience and lose, you win. -Henny Youngman, comedian and violinist (1906-1998) — Henny Youngman

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times - although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we
make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last blockon a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage. For each person there are thousands of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

You are the hip-hop violinist, the creator, the visionaire, ... and therefore you should do whatever the hell you wanna do because whatever you do is right. They're not gonna have like 20 hip-hop violinists in the company. I know what to do. — Miri Ben-Ari

My father is a violinist and my mother is a pianist, so I've been hearing music all my life. I started playing at three and had my first music teacher at five. — Michala Petri

Remember always that the composer's pen is still mightier than the bow of the violinist; in you lie all the possibilities of the creation of beauty. — John Philip Sousa

The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.' — Thomas Powers

When people watch me on TV they see part of my life. I wanted to let them know the real me behind the scenes. The child who was a concert violinist from the age of six. The young woman who took on the challenge to compete in the Miss America pageant. The television journalist for twenty-five years. The mother of two who, just like most women, struggles to balance work and family. — Gretchen Carlson

As a dancing violinist, there have been a couple of moments where I'm like, 'Oops! This is an expensive mistake!' — Lindsey Stirling

When you can hear a violinist, that is better than you, then you learn from him, because if you play with somebody who is worse than you, then you go down. — Ruggiero Ricci

My brother, who's a violinist now, was the real ham, the real performer of the family. His passion for the violin is the only thing that kept him from being an actor. — Peter Dinklage

I was always jealous of my violinist friends and cellist friends who traveled with their instruments. — Christian McKay

Albert Einstein was an avid violinist. He believed that working with his hands in this way and playing music helped his thinking process as well. In — Robert Greene

The violinist must possess the poet's gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within. — Yehudi Menuhin

Whether you want to be the top violinist or a CEO, strangely enough, hard work and perseverance can overcome a lot of things. — J Clifford Hudson

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. [on hearing a famous violinist] — Samuel Johnson

If your mom asks you to do the dishes, do not pull out your pirate attitude. But if someone tells you you're not good enough, says your dreams are too lofty, or claims there is no room in showbiz for a dancing violinist - well then, by all means, pull out your eye patch, my friend, and take to the high seas. — Lindsey Stirling

If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon. — Aleister Crowley

My father was a trained accountant, a BCom from Sydenham College and a self-taught violinist. In the 1920s, when he was in his teens, he heard a great violinist, Jascha Heifetz, and he was so inspired listening to him that he bought himself a violin, and with a little help from an Italian teacher, he learned to play it. — Zubin Mehta

Where do you want to go?
Back to violinist. I want to hear songs about suicide. — Bethany Griffin

A young concert violinist was asked the secret of her success. She replied, "Planned neglect." Then she explained, "When I was in school, there were many things that demanded my time. When I went to my room after breakfast, I made my bed, straightened the room, dusted the floor, and did whatever else came to my attention. Then I hurried to my violin practice. I found I wasn't progressing as I thought I should, so I reversed things. Until my practice period was completed, I deliberately neglected everything else. That program of planned neglect, I believe, accounts for my success."1 — John C. Maxwell

It is not only the violin that shapes the violinist, we are all shaped by the tools we train ourselves to use, and in this respect programming languages have a devious influence: they shape our thinking habits. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra. — Anne Rice

He felt that alcohol, cigarettes and the occasional cannabis joint was quite enough. There was no need to add caffeine to the list of health risks he put his body through."-Drake Kingsley's reason for not drinking tea or coffee, The Venetian Violinist. — Marcio Goncalves

Scott Tixier is an exciting young jazz violinist and is making an international name for himself.
I heard him in France and was immediately struck by his individuality and his sound. — Marcus Miller

I was trained by Method acting teachers and we were taught that aside from whatever gift you may or may not have or the level of that gift, that you were obliged to know how to build a table. It's a craft. It's like being a ballerina or a violinist. — Ellen Barkin

Men think God is destroying them because he is tuning them. The violinist screws up the key till the tense cord sounds the concert pitch; but it is not to break it, but to use it tunefully, that he stretches the string upon the musical rack. — Henry Ward Beecher

I know a famous violinist who told me he can't compose because he knows too many pieces. So, when he starts thinking of a note, an existing piece immediately comes to mind. Just starting out, one of your biggest strengths is not knowing how things are supposed to be. — Natalie Portman

Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. — G.K. Chesterton

I have always regarded manual labour as creative and looked with respect-and, yes, wonder-at people who work with their hands. It seems to me that their creativity is no less than that of a violinist or painter. — Pablo Casals

Unnur Birna is a Reykjavik-based violinist and singer. She has performed as a session musician with countless Icelandic and international artists while recording and appearing as a solo artist as well. Unnur has joined me as an unpaid guest on a few Icelandic shows in recent years, so it is a great pleasure to return the favour and appear on one of her songs at last. This new track, Sunshine, came about in Italy, written as an ode to sunlight and happiness after fleeing the dark winter in Iceland — Ian Anderson

I'm one of the boys, no better than the last second violinist. I'm just the lucky one to be standing in the center, telling them how to play. — Eugene Ormandy

Sometimes I think of blogging as finger exercises for a violinist; sometimes I think of it as mulching a garden. It is incredibly useful and helpful to my "real" writing. — Kate Christensen

My dad is a gentle and brilliant Iranian violinist. — Ottessa Moshfegh

I used to wish I would be a painter or a violinist, where maybe I wouldn't need to travel as much. Or maybe if I were a writer, I wouldn't need to travel as much. It's the travel that kind of killed me. And the hours. I always pictured if I were a painter you could make your own hours maybe ... work after the kids were asleep ... — Kathy Baker

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. — Gustave Flaubert

The psychological and physiological mechanism of love is so complex that at a certain period in his life a young man must concentrate all his energy on coming to grips with it, and in this way he misses the actual content of the love: the woman he loves. (In this he is much like a young violinist who cannot concentrate on the emotional content of a piece until the technique required to play it comes automatically.) — Milan Kundera

It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music. — Honore De Balzac

Well, I've been a musician my whole life. When I was two, I would sing the theme from Star Wars in my crib; my mom taped it for proof. Then, when I was five, I asked for a violin. No one knew why I would want one, but my wish was granted and I ended up a classically trained fiddler by age 12. The only problem with that was, when you're a classical violinist, everybody expects you to be satisfied with playing Tchaikovsky for the rest of your life, and saying you want to play jazz, rock, write songs, sing your songs, hook up your fiddle to a guitar amp, sleep with your 4-track recorder, mess around with synths, dress like Tinkerbell in combat boots, AND play Tchaikovsky is equivalent to spitting on the Pope. — Emilie Autumn

Every writer is obliged to create his own language, as every violinist is obliged to create his own "tone" ... . I don't mean to say that I like original writers who write badly. I prefer - and perhaps it's a weakness - those who write well. But they begin to write well only on condition that they're original, that they create their own language. Correctness, perfection of style do exist, but on the other side of originality, after having gone through all the faults, not this side. Correctness this side - "discreet emotion," "smiling good nature," "most abominable of all years" - doesn't exist. The only way to defend language is to attack it, yes, yes, Madame Straus! — Alain De Botton

My mother was a very good violinist; my father was a musicologist and spent most of his life in academia. — Pete Seeger

I have no problem with being fabulous. My problem comes when you won't allow yourself to be an ordinary woman with a decent apartment and an okay job. When only the mom is allowed to be boring - because her life is so rich with meaning.

When I carefully choreographed the story of how amazing I was, I was acting like one of those helicopter parents - you know, the ones who refuse to admit that their Jackson might suck at math or Stella might not be the world's greatest violinist. 'You are special! You are special!' they cry to their children, hoping this will boost their confidence. But the real message is one of panic: You must be special. Ordinary is not okay. When I walked into a party projecting the Shiny Girl - she of the lighthearted flings and glitzy job - I was essentially doing the same thing. — Sara Eckel

The zenith of virtuosity, a violinist like Jascha Heifetz, the supernatural in a pianist like Vladimir Horowitz, these are performers who were so idiosyncratic and personal that to imitate them would be like filling somebody else's bottle with your wine. — David Finckel

What I like about The Sims is that I don't have a normal life at all, so I play this game where these people have these really boring, mundane lives. It's fun. My Sims family is called the Cholly family. I don't know why I picked that name; it's kind of random. The teenage daughter is my favourite, because I just had her go through this Goth phase. She's really kind of nerdy and she just became a concert violinist, which is pretty huge for the family. And she got into private school. But she started wearing black lipstick and she dyed her hair purple. It's pretty huge. — Gerard Way

Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer's head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different. — Margaret Atwood

At the end of '69 I did a gig with Jean Luc Ponty here in L.A. He was an electric violinist. — George Duke

I knew I could never match my father as a violinist, and there were already four generations of outstanding cellists in the family. — Leonard Slatkin

I would not want the limitations held by the name of a classical musician. I want many people to enjoy my music much beyond just classical music fans. I think the term, 'violinist,' keeps me distant from the audience. I want to communicate with them more. — Ji-Hae Park

If it's one thing we learned from the first book, it's that you don't have to be a prizefighter, or a world-renowned architect, or a concert violinist to have been affected by the power of words. — Marlo Thomas

I felt as out of place as a left-handed violinist in a crowded string section. — Chic Murray

Einstein was attending a music salon in Germany before the second world war, with the violinist S. Suzuki. Two Japanese women played a German piece of music and a woman in the audience exclaimed: "How wonderful! It sounds so German!" Einstein responded: "Madam, people are all the same." — Albert Einstein

I first played the Royal Albert Hall when I was 14. I was a violinist with the Birmingham Schools Concert Orchestra, and we travelled down from the Midlands for the last night of the School Proms. We played some pieces from the Harry Potter films, and the violin parts were really hard. — Laura Mvula

I think that if a real princess was lost in this modern world and she could be whatever she wanted, she would be a musician,' Blanche said slowly. 'A violinist, or a harpist. That would be the only place where she could find solace for her lost kingdom. — Regina Doman

This young man is an exceptionally gifted and talented violinist ... He is a first class talent ... — Ruggiero Ricci

A violinist had a violin, a painter his palette. All I had was myself. I was the instrument that I must care for. — Josephine Baker

The only reason I am successful is because I have stayed true to myself. — Lindsey Stirling

A violinist fiddled.
With strings resined for winter.
Summer's light splintered. — H.S. Crow

I decided to make spaghetti for lunch again. Not that I was the least bit hungry. But I couldn't just go on sitting on the sofa, waiting for the phone to ring. I had to move my body, to begin working toward some goal. I put water in a pot, turned on the gas, and until it boiled I would make tomato sauce while listening to an FM broadcast. The radio was playing an unaccompanied violin sonata by Bach. The performance itself was excellent, but there was something annoying about it. I didn't know whether this was the fault of the violinist or of my own present state of mind, but I turned off the music and went on cooking in silence. I heated the olive oil, put garlic in the pan, and added minced onions. When these began to brown, I added the tomatoes that I had chopped and strained. It was good to be cutting things and frying things like this. It gave me a sense of accomplishment that I could feel in my hands. I liked the sounds and the smells. — Haruki Murakami

Hello again, violinist,' he said in a hoarse voice. 'Fancy meeting you here. — Regina Doman

In 'The Violinist's Thumb,' I talk about the poignancy of cells leaking across the placenta into both the mother and the child. — Sam Kean

Along the way [Mozart] got married; fathered seven children (two of whom survived into adulthood); performed as a pianist; violinist; and conductor; maintained a successful teaching studio; wrote thousands of letters; traveled widely; attended the theater religiously; played cards, billiards, and bocce; and rode horseback for exercise. Not bad for someone portrayed as a giggling idiot in the movies. — Robert Greenberg

But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio. — Yiyun Li

I get nervous calling myself an artist. I feel I'm more like an interpreter or a violinist, you know. — Meryl Streep

The actor must know that since he, himself, is the instrument, he must play on it to serve the character with the same effortless dexterity with which the violinist makes music on his. Just because he doesn't look like a violin is no reason to assume his techniques should be thought of as less difficult. — Uta Hagen

- the longer you silence a violin, the harder it is for it to find its true voice again. — Alexandra Bracken

If you mess up the tiniest little thing in the Beethoven concerto, or the phrasing isn't just exactly perfectly executed, Beethoven brings out the worst in the best violinist. You almost never hear a satisfying performance, because it doesn't play itself. — Joshua Bell

A lot of my joy this year has been to give away awards to young people, no matter of race, creed or color, because they were a terrific violinist or a terrific dancer. — Sally Kirkland

The mastery of one's phonemes may be compared to the violinist's mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor's renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies. — Willard Van Orman Quine

For twelve years I studied and worked at them every day, and I was nearly 25 before I had the courage to play one of them in public. Before I did, no violinist or cellist had ever played a Suite in its entirety. — Pablo Casals

Aleksey and I have gathered together a bunch of kindred spirits who are also versatile musicians. We have a violinist who eats fire, another who is an acrobat, and a flutist who beats boxes. We hope in years to come to tour the U.S. with our 'League of X-traordinary musicians.' — Richard Hyung-ki Joo

Now, when it was too late, and Life's shops were closed, he regretted not having bought a certain book he had always wanted; never having gone through an earthquake, a fire, a train accident; never having seen Tatsienlu in Tibet, or heard blue magpies chattering in Chinese willows; not having spoken to that errant schoolgirl with shameless eyes, met one day in a lonely glade; not having laughed at the poor little joke of a shy ugly woman, when no one had laughed in the room; having missed trains, allusions, and opportunities; not having handed the penny he had in his pocket to that old street violinist playing to himself tremulously on a certain bleak day in a certain forgotten town. — Vladimir Nabokov

Jess paints a pretty picture of an orchestra, but if we are one, then I'm the first chair violinist... who's been doused in gasoline and handed a match by the fans to watch me play while going up in flames. — Ashley Poston

The great mystery isn't that people do things badly but that they occasionally do a few things well. The only thing that is universal is incompetence. Strength is always specific! Nobody ever commented, for example, that the great violinist Jascha Heifetz probably couldn't play the trumpet very well. — Peter Drucker

My first hip-hop performance was at Carnegie Hall with Wyclef, ... I got a little feature and he announced me as the 'hip-hop violinist.' The next night I played at the Apollo. — Miri Ben-Ari

Every violinist has a different style, so it's important to be able to recognise their styles. You don't have to like everyone's style but you have to know these styles. — Ruggiero Ricci

The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet. — Yehudi Menuhin