Quotes about play
page 9

“Making love without noise is like playing a muted piano-fine for practice, but you cheat yourself out of hearing the glorious results.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Love, Making love, Cheating

“because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie.”

Alan Paton book Cry, the Beloved Country

Source: Cry, the Beloved Country

Life, Lie, Star, Falseness

“Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.”

Ann-Marie MacDonald book Fall on Your Knees

Source: Fall on Your Knees

Memory

“I say, Billy, what’s the use in playing croquet when you’re doomed?
He says, Frankie, what’s the use of not playing croquet when you’re doomed?”

Frank McCourt book Angela's Ashes

Source: Angela's Ashes

“Have you been playing in toxic waste lately?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Witch & Wizard

“I could dance with you till the cows come home. Better still, I'll dance with the cows and you come home."
Groucho Marx was never one to pass up an opportunity for a play on words and this occurs in his dialogue of the 1933 film Duck Soup:”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Home, Dance

“Are you staring at me because you've seen my doppelganger roaming the halls, playing kind of the cafeteria? Or because you need to borrow a pencil and you're too shy to ask?”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Fated

“Cooking is at once child's play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.”

Craig Claiborne (1920–2000) Journalist and book author

Love, Joy, Cooking

“You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Life, Singing, Painting

“It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) German late baroque era composer

Variant: There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

Music, Time

“I should be doing my homework now. But the way I look at it, playing in the snow is a lot more important. Out here I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life.

- Such as?

- Procrastination and rationalization.”

Bill Watterson Calvin and Hobbes

Source: Calvin and Hobbes

Life, Way, Learning

“What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

Love, Making love, Mood, Fight

“Jace Herondale plays the piano very well.”
“And he knows it.”
“That sounds like a Herondale.” Tessa laughed.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a
coffee cup in a park for old men playing
chess or silly games of some sort.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Men, Game, Coffee, Cry

“God writes a lot of comedy, Donna; the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Happy to be Here (1983), p. 259
Source: Happy to Be Here

God

“It’s tempting to wish for the perfect boss, the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit. But maybe the best any of us can do is not to quit, play the hand we’ve been dealt, and accessorize what we’ve got.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Parent, Perfection

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend… if you have one.""Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one."”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Night

“There are men running governments who shouldn't be allowed to play with matches.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Men

“If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Said to Samuel J Woolf, Berlin, Summer 1929. Cited with additional notes in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice and Freeman Dyson, Princeton UP (2010) p 230
1920s
Variant: If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

Life, Success, Success

“There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Game, Joy

“Besides my great fashion sense? I play a mean harmonica.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Fashion, Sense