Quotes about accordion (13 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Father's Day , For Father , Smile , Thinking

“Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups.”

Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) Egyptian writer

Mahfouz (1957) Palace of Desire Part II; Cited in Matt Schudel " Leading Arab Novelist Gave Streets a Voice http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083000475.html" in: Washington Post, August 31, 2006

Music , Laughter , Singing , Help

“Papa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones.
Papa was an accordion!
But his bellows were all empty.
Nothing went in and nothing came out.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

For Father , Dead

“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Music , Knowledge , Singing

“Who's Heinz and what's an accordion?"
-Spader”

D.J. MacHale book The Never War

Source: The Never War

“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

“[W]hen the coyote falls, he gets up and brushes himself off; it's preservation of dignity. He's humiliated, and it worries him when he ends up looking like an accordion. A coyote isn't much, but it's better than being an accordion.”

Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films

Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats", 53.

“Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

“…Another highlight of the festival was the performance of the Alchemy Trio in the Tempel Synagogue. That's a great cracovian cellist Dorota Imiełowska with accordion wizard Konrad Ligas and equally sensational bassist Roman Ślazyk. With musicians performed 16-year-old Łukasz Pawlikowski of which can confidently say that he has joined the ranks of the best Polish cellists. Jewish music they played (even in their own arrangement) enchanted, deeply touched and amused, because this music is not only an emotional but also full of humor. It was not just a concert - artists presented musical and theatrical spectacle. Excellent!”

Łukasz Pawlikowski (1997) Polish cellist

...Kolejnym wydarzeniem festiwalu był występ Alchemy Trio w Synagodze Tempel. To znakomita krakowska wiolonczelistka Dorota Imiełowska z czarodziejem akordeonu Konradem Ligasem i równie rewelacyjnym kontrabasistą Romanem Ślazykiem. Z muzykami wystapił 16-letni Łukasz Pawlikowski, o którym śmiało można powiedzieć, że już dołączył do grona najlepszych polskich wiolonczelistów. Muzyka żydowska, którą grali / również we własnej aranżacji/ zachwycała, wzruszała i bawiła, bo to muzyka nie tylko niezwykle emocjonalna, ale i pełna humoru. To był nie tylko koncert - artyści zaprezentowali spektakl muzyczno-teatralny. Rewelacja!
[Beata Penderecka, http://www.radiokrakow.pl/www/index.nsf/ID/BPEA-9AZLHZ, Cellos on Music in Old Cracow, Radio Kraków, 2013-28-08, Polish]
About

Music , Confidence

“He loved hitherto-unthought-of, thereafter-unthinkable combinations of instruments. When some extraordinary array of players filed half-proudly, half-sheepishly on to the stage, looking like the Bremen Town Musicians—if those were, as I think they were, a rooster, a cat, a dog, and a donkey—you could guess beforehand that it was to be one of Gottfried’s compositions. His Joyous Celebration of the Memory of the Master Johann Sebastian Bach had a tone-row composed of the notes B, A, C, and H (in the German notation), of these inverted, and of these transposed; and there were four movements, the first played on instruments beginning with the letter b, the second on instruments beginning with the letter a, and so on. After the magnificent group that ushered in the piece (bugle, bass-viol, bassoon, basset-horn, bombardon, bass-drum, baritone, and a violinist with only his bow) it was sad to see an Alp horn and an accordion come in to play the second movement. Gottfriend himself said about the first group: “Vot a bunch!””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

When I asked him how he had thought of it he said placidly: “De devil soldt me his soul.”
Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 4: “Constance and the Rosenbaums”, p. 136

Love , Sadness , Dogs , Soul

“For there is no constitutional right for any race to be preferred… If discrimination based on race is constitutionally permissible when those who hold the reins can come up with "compelling" reasons to justify it, then constitutional guarantees acquire an accordion-like quality.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312 (1974)
Judicial opinions

“Wouldn't it be as farfetched to call birth the cause of death as to call the cat's head the cause of the tail? Lifting the neck of a bottle implies lifting the bottom as well, for the "two parts" come up at the same time. If I pick up an accordion by one end, the other will follow a little later, but the principle is the same. Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 72

Death , Cats , Birth , Time

“Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion.”

Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–2012) United States Army general

War