Piano Quotes

“The pianokeys are black and white
but they sound like a million colors in your mind”
― Maria Cristina Mena, The Collected Stories of Maria Cristina Mena

“Arin. I've wanted to do this for a long time."

Her words silenced him, steadied him.

Anticipation lifted within her like the fragrance of a garden under the rain. She sat at the piano, touching the keys. "Ready?"

He smiled. "Play.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Kiss

“The piano ain't got no wrong notes.”
― Thelonious Monk

“When you play, never mind who listens to you.”
― Robert Schumann

“All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city's monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its culture slowly fading in the dismal sea.”
― Nathan Reese Maher

“The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides.”
― Artur Schnabel

“I dreamt of you last night - as if I was playing the piano and you were turning the pages for me.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“If, while at the piano, you attempt to form little melodies, that is very well; but if they come into your mind of themselves, when you are not practising, you may be still more pleased; for the internal organ of music is then roused in you. The fingers must do what the head desires; not the contrary.”
― Robert Schumann

“Play always as if in the presence of a master.”
― Robert Schumann

“When she started to play, Steinway came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano. ”
― Bob Hope

“I tell you a secret about Chopin, piano is his best friend. More. He tells piano all his secrets.” - piano teacher Eleanora Sivan.”
― Anna Goldsworthy, Piano Lessons: A Memoir

“Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you’ve split yourself open. And when they see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need need, need need, need need, pianos do not run. And so she plays.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Love Magick

“Everybody told me this 'girl on the piano' thing was never going to work.”
― Tori Amos

“She always wanted to be the kind of person who could play the "Moonlight" Sonata.

She buries her failure in this, as she buries all her failures, in reading.”
― Lauren Groff, Florida

“I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.”
― Edith Sitwell

“As for the piano, the faster her fingers flew over it, the more he marveled. She struck the keys with aplomb and ran from one end of the keyboard to the other without a stop.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“On the stage Tristen bent over the piano, his fingers swift and sure, his blond hair gleaming under the spotlight. I glanced around at the audience, watching their faces, gratified that they were as captivated as I was by the dark, thunderous song that Tristen conjured.”
― Beth Fantaskey , Jekel Loves Hyde

“(Referring to the piano's natural shape) Isn't it a shame when those big fat opera singers lean against the pianos and bend them?”
― Victor Borge

“Listening to him play was like discovering an eagle in the wild. It was tumblingly bewitching. She could feel and hear genius she knew it.”
― Debra Anastasia, Poughkeepsie

“She always paid attention to fingers rather than faces because they told so much more. People remembered to guard their faces. They forgot their hands. Her own were small, though strong and supple from all the hours of piano playing, but what use was that now? For the first time she understood what real danger does to the human mind, as flat white fear froze the coils of her brain.”
― Kate Furnivall, The Jewel of St. Petersburg

“Do you know what the essential problem of the piano is?” he asked. He held me so his head was a few inches from my own. His eyes darted back and forth. “It is impossible to play continuously on a piano string like a violin. The problem is to sustain a note.”
― Frederick Weisel, Teller

“Master Ruem, a shipment has arrived,” Maroc says. “Premium packaging, express delivery, includes two-hundred-percent insurance. The sender’s address is Lotus Lodge, North Alpha.” He glances at the Mesmerizer from the corner of his eyes who now stops drinking. “It’s a grand piano. Decades-old model.” Maroc reveals.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“I give piano lessons. Do I know how to play the piano? Of course not. But you know the saying: Those who can’t do, teach.”
― Jarod Kintz, Whenever you're here, I'm there for you

“AI can compose music and play the piano. But that's OK, because I can play Chopsticks like I eat Chinese food.”
― Jarod Kintz, Me and memes and memories

“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art. When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“Time slows. The attic disappears. Jutta disappears. Has anyone ever
spoken so intimately about the very things Werner is most curious about?
Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them
before they close forever, and then a piano comes on, playing a lonely
song that sounds to Werner like a golden boat traveling a dark river, a
progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollverein: the houses turned
to mist, the mines filled in, the smokestacks fallen, an ancient sea
spilling through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Some trees yield fruit. No tree grows piano music, and that’s exactly the kind of vegetable that goes best with dinner.”
― Jarod Kintz, Whenever you're here, I'm there for you

“I'm still hurting from the frowning, cruel piano teacher who stole music from me. Hurting from the pain of my mother forcing me as a child to play exactly as I was instructed, to be the prodigy she so desperately wished me to be. I'm still holding a grudge as dark and sinister as the clouds outside for the both of them. Because I was never enough. I was never going to be the golden ticket into a life they craved.”
― K.M. Moronova, The Fabric of Our Souls

“Look at these trees!' [Liszt] said, 'the wind plays in the leaves, stirs up life among them, the tree remains the same, that is Chopinesque rubato”
― Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Chopin: Pianist and Teacher: As Seen by his Pupils

“So my little bungalow in the Garden of Allah was a peaceful retreat. It was the best place to practice I ever had-until a piano player moved into a bungalow across from mine and shattered the peace.
I was looking forward to a solid weekend of practice, without interruptions, when my new neighbor started to bang away. I couldn’t hear anything below a forte on the harp. There were no signs the piano banging was going to stop. It only got more overpowering. This character was warming up for a solid weekend of practice too.
I went to the office to register a complaint. One of us had to go, I said, and it wasn’t going to be me because I was there first. But the management didn’t see it my way. The new guest, whose playing was driving me nuts, was Sergei Rachmaninoff. They were not about to ask him to move.
I was flattered to have such a distinguished neighbor, but I still had to practice. So I got rid of him my own way.
I opened the door and all the windows in my place and began to play the first four bars of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor, over and over, fortissimo. Two hours later my fingers were getting numb. But I didn’t let up, not until I heard a thunderous crash of notes from across the way, like the keyboard had been attacked with a pair of sledge hammers.
Then there was silence.
This time it was Rachmaninoff who went to complain. He asked to be moved to another bungalow immediately, the farthest possible from that dreadful harpist. Peace returned to the Garden.
I didn’t really know until much later how sharp my intuition had been. I found out that the great pianist and composer detested his Prelude in C-sharp Minor. He considered it a very Minor piece of work. He was haunted by it everywhere he went, by students who butchered it and by audiences who clamored for it, and he wished he’d never written it. After playing the damn thing nonstop for two hours I knew exactly how he felt.”
― Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!