Piano Quotes - Page 5

I wish to thank Steinway for its wonderful pianos which I've been privileged to play in all my concerts. There is no piano like it in the world.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

People compose for many reasons, to become immortal; because the piano happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire; because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; or for no reason whatsoever.

It was an unforgettable picture to see Chopin sitting at the piano like a clairvoyant, lost in his dreams; to see how his vision communicated itself through his playing, and how, at the end of each piece, he had the sad habit of running one finger over the length of the plaintive keyboard, as though to tear himself forcibly away from his dream.

The piano is not firewood -- yet.

In one dancing saloon I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.'

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

Oh yeah, we all write. That's what's great about when you have basics in piano.

I read and write classical piano and percussion, also guitar.

Drawing is like studying Greek and piano- you can't speak or play in your conscious, which is clumsy. You must get it into your subconscious, which is graceful. But that takes time.

You can't be different if you look at it. Being gifted is different. I had that in my piano playing. I'm very thankful for that. I'm very aware of that. The style and what I fed is just me. I never worked at it. It just happened.

Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.

Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I'm invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who'll play the piano after dinner, and I know you're not really invited for yourself. You're just an ornament.

If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.

I played, like, a year of piano until I learned the 'Pink Panther' theme. That was my goal. Once I was good enough, I quit. Now my music has to have some rock.

The mark of genius is consistency. Do we hear of naive genius piano players? If anyone knows of one, try listening to it for an hour.

Keep searchin’ for your mystery note on the universal piano of life.

I was very depressed when I was 19... I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.

Just before I play, I like to feel that no-one has ever played the piano before, that I'm in complete virgin territory, and that every note I play is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.

No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.

God didn't give me the ability to play the piano, or paint a picture or have compassion. But... he did give me the ability to crack a walnut with my hoo-ha.

Well I like everything but my first love has always been piano because when I started out there was a piano in my house and it was there so I just started tinkling on it really so it's always been my first love.

It had the old double keyboard, an entirely different set of keys for capitals and figures, so that the paper seemed a long way off, and the machine was as big and solid as a battle cruiser. Typing was then a muscular activity. You could ache after it. If you were not familiar with those vast keyboards, your hand wandered over them like a child lost in a wood. The noise might have been that of a shipyard on the Clyde. You would no more have thought of carrying one of those grim structures as you would have thought of travelling with a piano.

I would just hear piano players and I would hear music, and just think - I don't just want to sit here and passively listen; I want to get inside it.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.