Quotes & Sayings About Virtuoso

Well, I do expect a lot of myself. I'm a harsh critic because I know what I'm capable of. I have hit those occasional peaks amongst the valleys, but the peaks are so few-things like genuine flashes of virtuoso brush inking, like I've never executed before or since-I can count on one hand the number of jobs where I've been able to hit that mark. The same with penciling. Sometimes it just flows, but more often than not, it's pure physical and spiritual torment just to get something decent on paper. I often get very discouraged with the whole creative process. — Dave Stevens

My dear loser, Glenn greeted Wertheimer, with his Canadian-American cold-bloodedness he always called him the loser, he called me quite dryly the philosopher, which didn't bother me. Wertheimer, the loser, was for Glenn always busy losing, constantly losing out, whereas Glenn noticed I had the word philosopher in my mouth at all times and probably with sickening regularity, and so quite naturally we were for him the loser and the philosopher, I said to myself upon entering the inn. The loser and the philosopher went to America to see Glenn the piano virtuoso again, for no other reason. And — Thomas Bernhard

It [Christian Social Party] recognized the value of large-scale propaganda and was a virtuoso in influencing the psychological instincts of the broad masses of its adherents. — Adolf Hitler

Provocative. Striking. Rachel Resnick is a virtuoso on the page. Her fearless examination of the desperate thirst to find love is guaranteed to break your heart. Yet her cool-eyed analysis of the roots of this addiction inspires hope that through committed self-understanding, maybe each of us can change toxic patterns, whatever they may be. — Samantha Dunn

The creature you find in Speak, Memory is rare enough to be zoo-worthy. He's not just smarter but somehow more effete than most of us without seeming put on. Resenting him for it would be like resenting a gazelle for her grace. He doesn't sound prissy painting himself as a cultivated synesthete who can hear colors and see music, nor vain talking as a polyglot who translates his own work back and forth into many languages. He's just your standard virtuoso aristocrat from a gilded age. Which is the miracle of his talent. He has shaped the book to highlight his own magnificent way of viewing the world, a viewpoint that so eats your head that you never really leave his very oddly bejeweled skull, and you value things in the book's context as he does, never missing what you otherwise adore in another kind of writer. — Mary Karr

Two simple principles lie at the bottom of the whole matter, and they may be precipitated into two rules. The first is that, when there is a choice, the milder drink is always the better-not merely the safer but the better. The second is that no really enlightened drinker ever takes a drink at a time when he has any work to do. There is, of course, more to it than this; but these are sufficient for the beginner, and even the virtuoso never outgrows them. — H.L. Mencken

Without ever leaving her hide-out in Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery O'Connor knew all there was to know about the two-lane, dirt and blacktop Southern roads of the 1950s - with their junkyards and tourist courts, gravel pits and pine trees that pressed at the edges of the road. She knew the slogans of the Burma Shave signs, knew the names of barbecue joints and the chicken baskets on their menus. She also knew a backwoods American cadence and vocabulary you'd think was limited to cops, truckers, runaway teens, and patrons of the Teardrop Inn where at midnight somebody could always be counted on to go out to a pickup truck and come back with a shotgun. She was a virtuoso mimic, and she assimilated whole populations of American sounds and voices, and then offered them back to us from time to time in her small fictional detonations, one of which she named, in 1953, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find. — William Caverlee

Play slow and perfect - that's the way to becoming a virtuoso. — Steve Vai

A virtuoso performance. Scott Thompson's biography of the soldier statesman Fidel V. Ramos illustrates the fascinating and complex geography of Filipino politics and its relation with the American hegemon. It's first-rate scholarship and equally first-rate writing. — F. Sionil Jose

The stories in Get In Trouble confirm once again that Kelly Link is a modern virtuoso of the form-playful and subversive required reading for anyone who loves short fiction. — Jeff VanderMeer

He was the only world-famous piano virtuoso who abhorred his public and also actually withdrew definitively from this abhorred public. — Thomas Bernhard

It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things. — Jim Jarmusch

When I was young, Tchaikovsky was ruined for me by conductors who made it slick and treacly. Hearing Valery Gergiev conduct Tchaikovsky has been a revelation - he brings out all its raw passion. And Gergiev with the super-virtuoso LSO - well, it's just the perfect combination. — Charles Hazlewood

I'm not a virtuoso on an instrument. You know, I'm not always singing in pitch. I laugh sometimes my way through the shows, but I'm an honest songwriter who's always tried to bring the audience with me on my journey in hopes that they see their own lives reflected in the work. — Jason Mraz

For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life. — Franz Liszt

It's not a bad thing to play second fiddle if the first chair is a virtuoso. — J.T. Sather

The virtuoso element in jazz playing, all those very fast runs in the upper extremes, simply doesn't appeal to me. That's why I don't want to make my concerto "virtuosic" in the sense of a technical show-off. I want a beautiful sound and a melodic and lyrical line. I am more interested in the way someone can play musically. — Gavin Bryars

When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists. — Andres Segovia

What is the best music is impossible to define. Just because it's played by a virtuoso player, doesn't mean it's great music. It might not reflect the soul of a people, which is really my criteria for great music. — Mickey Hart

At some point, I had to make a decision: I could practice more and become a really great guitar player or I could work on writing better songs. There are only so many hours in the day, and I found writing songs more fulfilling than working on becoming this virtuoso guitar player. — James Iha

Where we are from, he said, stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change ... But in America, people's stories change all the time. In America, it is the man who matters. — Adam Johnson

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with. — Christopher Hampton

Being insecure - I'm a master, a virtuoso - they can be handing me the keys to the kingdom and all I can think is, I hope I don't drop the key. — M. Night Shyamalan

There is more to creative mastership than the surface of satisfaction and political certainty. The music of Joe Fonda is part of a living tradition of belief and dedication. Future historians will be surprised at the breadth of Mr. Fonda's offerings. This is a real virtuoso and composer of the highest order. — Anthony Braxton

I have never learned to read or write music so I am not a virtuoso musician like the others you mentioned. I am completely unable to play like them because I never learned classical music, I just developed my own crazy style! — Ken Hensley

Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony. — Thomas Bernhard

I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself, in my great chair at school, as some dictator at the head of a common-wealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. I have several renowned generals but three feet high, and several deep-projecting politicians in petticoats. I have others catching and dissecting flies, accumulating remarkable pebbles, cockleshells, etc., with as ardent curiosity as any virtuoso in the Royal Society ... . At one table sits Mr. Insipid foppling and fluttering, spinning his whirligig, or playing with his fingers as gaily and wittily as any Frenchified coxcomb brandishes his cane and rattles his snuff box. At another sits the polemical divine, plodding and wrangling in his mind about Adam's fall in which we sinned, all as his primer has it. — John Adams

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso. — Robert Quine

Jazz is not a game of chance. Its sonorous disorder is only an appearance. It is an organized force obeying obscure laws, conforming to a secret technique, codified or not, and we discover that no one can become a virtuoso on the spur of the moment in this orchestra of 'noisemakers. — Wanda Landowska

Despite popular opinion, there are no important parallels between Madonna and Monroe, who was a virtuoso comedienne but who was in secure, depressive, passive-aggressive, and infuriatingly obstructionist in her career habits. Madonna is manic, perfectionist, workaholic. Monroe abused alcohol and drugs, while Madonna shuns them. Monroe had a tentative, melting, dreamy solipsism; Madonna has Judy Holliday's wisecracking smart mouth and Joan Crawford's steel will and bossy, circus master managerial competence. — Camille Paglia

Where we are from ... [s]tories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change. — Adam Johnson

If you want to be a virtuoso then you have to set your sights above me. You have to go beyond what I'm doing. And that's for you to figure out. Because if you can do that, then I'm going to be trying to go beyond you. — Steve Vai

A revolutionary age is an age of action; ours is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens but there is immediate publicity everywhere. In the present age a rebellion is, of all things, the most unthinkable. Such an expression of strength would seem ridiculous to the calculating intelligence of our times. On the other hand a political virtuoso might bring off a feat almost as remarkable. He might write a manifesto suggesting a general assembly at which people should decide upon a rebellion, and it would be so carefully worded that even the censor would let it pass. At the meeting itself he would be able to create the impression that his audience had rebelled, after which they would all go quietly home
having spent a very pleasant evening. — Soren Kierkegaard

Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mocking birds aren't content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird collects snatches of birdsong from this tree and that field, appropriates them, places them in new and unexpected contexts, recreates the world from the world. For example, a mockingbird in South Carolina was heard to blend the songs of thirty-two different kinds of birds into a ten-minute performance, a virtuoso display that serve no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art. — Tom Robbins

You are a man with music in his soul. You are capricious, contrary, contradictory. You delight in childish games, and delight even more in winning. For a man of such intense piety, you are surprisingly petty. You are a gentleman, a virtuoso, a scholar, and a martyr, and of those masks, I like the martyr least of all. You are austere, you are pompous, you are pretentious, you are foolish. — S. Jae-Jones

We really feel very humbled that we are a part of so many lives around the globe and that we can help connect people from everywhere with and through our music. My experiences with fans are mostly wonderful and I am always so grateful when I see what kind of positive effect our music has on people. All of our fan experiences are memorable in different way, but it is especially powerful and meaningful when you can feel that someone is really inspired with what you are doing. This is especially true for the young generation. It feels good to know that we can get these kids to pick up classical instruments and see them as instruments they can rock on. — Luka Sulic

The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous will happen. — Claude Debussy

Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both. — Ethel Barrymore

When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows. — Robert Moog

Carlton Mellick III is one of bizarro fiction's most talented practitioners, a virtuoso of the surreal, science fictional tale. — Cory Doctorow

Fresh proof of the risks you run in writing about players, and of the advisability of not standing to leeward of their self-esteem when one has had the misfortune to wound it in the slightest degree. When you criticize a singer, you do not have his colleagues up in arms against you. Indeed, they generally feel that you have not been severe enough. But the virtuoso instrumentalist who belongs to a well-known musical organization always claims that in criticizing him you are 'insulting' the whole institution, and though the contention is absurd he sometimes succeeds in making the other players believe it. — Hector Berlioz

My letters seeking a job, though truthful, diminished the full truth. Face would blanch if the facts had been complete: "Dear Sir," I thought. "Do you have a position for a journeyman burglar, con man, forger and car thief; also with experience as armed robber, pimp, card cheat and several other things. I smoked marijuana at twelve (in the 40's) and shot heroin at sixteen. I have no experience with LSD and methedrine. They came to popularity since my imprisonment. I've buggered pretty young boys and feminine homosexuals (but only when locked up away from women). In the idiom of jails, prisons and gutters (some plush gutters) I'm a motherfucker! Not literally, for I don't remember my mother. In my world the term, used as I used it, is a boast of being hell on wheels, outrageously unpredictable, a virtuoso of crime. Of course by being a motherfucker in that world I'm a piece of garbage in yours. Do you have a job? — Edward Bunker

Trombone virtuoso and innovative composer, Papo combines the best of jazz and Latin music to create a genre that is unique and wild. He's redefined Latin jazz! — Michael Brecker

She deferred to her partner, to the virtuoso hands of Gwen Shanks, freaky-big, fluid as a couple of tide-pool dwellers, cabled like the Golden Gate Bridge. — Michael Chabon

The music had an ambitious, virtuoso structure, but at the same time it was beautifully introspective. It honestly and delicately expressed, in a full, tangible way, what it meant to be alive. A crucial aspect of the world that could only be expressed through the medium of music. — Haruki Murakami

Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background. — Twyla Tharp

I'm a virtuoso in my job in that there's not an actor I can't go into a scene with and be absolutely confident that, whatever is required of my character, I can do it. — Russell Crowe

Just as most of us prefer to watch a trapeze artist work without a net, we like to be absolutely sure that a virtuoso is giving us our money's worth, and a seemingly effortless performance, no matter how spectacular it may be, deprives us of that slightly sadistic thrill. — Terry Teachout

to have to combat one's instincts - that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Most of our fan experiences include many touching moments. There are even fans who have told us that our music saved their lives and that is very powerful to hear and to realize, that our music can make such a profound difference. — Stjepan Hauser

Virtuoso? Are you serious? What kind of code name is that? Who's assigning code names these days? They should be shot. How can anyone feel threatened by someone named Virtuoso? — Elizabeth Bevarly

EXTREMELY FUNNY! A SUPER-VIRTUOSO! I expected to enjoy 'The Two and Only,' but I didn't expect to be touched, much less to find my eyes growing moist. — Terry Teachout

Trapnel wanted, among other things, to be a writer, a dandy, a lover, a comrade, an eccentric, a sage, a virtuoso, a good chap, a man of honour, a hard case, a spendthrift, an opportunist, a raisonneur; to be very rich, to be very poor, to possess a thousand mistresses, to win the heart of one love to whom he was ever faithful, to be on the best of terms with all men, to avenge savagely the lightest affront, to live to a hundred full of years and honour, to die young and unknown but recognized the following day as the most neglected genius of the age. Each of these ambitions had something to recommend it from one angle or another, with the possible exception of being poor - the only aim Trapnel achieved with unqualified mastery - and even being poor, as Trapnel himself asserted, gave the right to speak categorically when poverty was discussed by people like Evadne Clapham. — Anthony Powell

Parent could embarrass their kids during the teenage years, but only a true virtuoso could embarrass them into their twenties and beyond. — Danielle Monsch

I'm a pretty good drummer. I'm pretty good at guitar, bass and piano. I can play accordion; I'm not virtuoso. I've played cello before. My sister played it, and I know how to play it, but I'm not the best. Violin is kind of the same thing. — Brendon Urie

The professionalism of technique and flash of dexterity are more comfortable to be around than raw creative power, hence our society generally rewards virtuoso performers more highly than it rewards original creators. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

I was never really a virtuoso guitar player per se. — Mick Jones

The kissing is soft to an almost abrupt firmness as our waists adhere. I then begin to question if I can feel my body as a controlling wave of this gratifying force travels from my legs to my face. Nadia is now glowing with a pleasurable subtleness that thanks me with every inhale and exhale as our bodies move. Her calm cool hands drag across the sides of my back from my buttocks to my shoulders. Down and up again she strokes and caresses me without missing a tune as if I were a beloved instrument played by its master virtuoso. — Luccini Shurod