Quotes about violin

A collection of quotes on the topic of violin, play, likeness, music.

Quotes about violin

“Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses:

"1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book A Study in Scarlet

Source: A Study in Scarlet

Law, Literature, Knowledge, Appearance

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Love, Beauty, Dance

“It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air!”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. II, st. 9
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Love, Life, Dance

“if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

“There is a man, playing a violin, and the strings are the nerves in his own arm…”

James O'Barr (1960) Artist

“Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

Life, Learning

“A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Coffee

“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895

Life, Learning

“I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday." He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus."”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

On the song "Yesterday", written by Paul McCartney
Playboy interview (1980)

Guy, Understanding

“I go to restaurants and the groups always play "Yesterday." I even signed a guy's violin in Spain after he played us "Yesterday."”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

He couldn't understand that I didn't write the song. But I guess he couldn't have gone from table to table playing "I Am The Walrus."
On the song "Yesterday", written by Paul McCartney
Playboy interview (1980)

Guy

“There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Five Orange Pips

Source: The Five Orange Pips

Way, Weather, Forgetting

“He was gazing at her, the way one did when one felt one was unobserved. He had that look on his face, the look he usually got only when he was playing the violin, as if he were completely caught up and entranced.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Way

“Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad…”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Sadness

“The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. He was playing his life… He played that which he would never play again.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Life, Soul

“Very touching. Do you want me to imitate a violin?”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Variant: Very touching," said a voice from the stairway. "Do you want me to imitate a violin?" - Damon
Source: The Fury

“…the violin — that most human of all instruments…”

Louisa May Alcott book Jo's Boys

Source: Jo's Boys

“To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.”

William Nicholson movie Shadowlands

Source: Shadowlands

God, Pain, World, Dreams

“We are so not breaking out the violins and pity partying.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

“Being content is perhaps no less easy than playing the violin well: and requires no less practice.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“He played of love and loss and years of silence, words unsaid and vows unspoken, and all the spaces between his heart and theirs; and when he was done, and he'd set the violin back in its box, Will's eyes were closed, but Tessa's were full of tears.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love, Tear, Silence, Loss

“He touched her as he usually touched his beloved violin, with a soft and urgent grace that left her breathless.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

“A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?”

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

Happiness, Happy, Cute

“God, as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched…. God will tutor us by trying us because He loves us, not because of indifference!”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Love, God, Music, Soul

“He lifted the violin to his shoulder then, and raised the bow. And he played.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. … I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.”

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

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Life, Music, Thinking, Joy

“The older the violin, the sweeter the music.”

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

Music

“A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.”

Edmond de Goncourt (1822–1896) French writer

Star

“If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of human thought.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Part II: Letters (1887 - 1901) TO MRS. LAURENCE HUTTON Wrentham, February 20, 1898.
The Story of My Life (1903)

Music, Perfection

“Trying to solve the worlds problems by making things 5% more efficient is like trying to play the violin with gardening gloves. Not much good will come out of it. We must invent new ways!”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

On why saving a bit of power here or there will not solve our energy problems. Comments made at the opening of the movie "An Inconvenient Truth.

World, Way, Problem

“Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother.”

Anton Webern (1883–1945) Austrian composer and conductor

Letter to Alban Berg. Hayes, Malcolm. 1995. Anton von Webern, p. 71

Death

“(about her beginnings) "People assume I always wanted to be a violinist. It was actually just one of many other hobbies that I had. I had very enthusiastic parents. They gave me swimming lessons and horseback riding and gymnastics and ballet. My mom put me on the piano when I was about 3i. I asked for the violin when I was 4 because I wanted something that was smaller and more portable. I auditioned for the Juilliard School when I was about 6. During the week, I went to a regular school in Philadelphia so I could be with kids my own age." and "I started my career when I was 8 with two debuts in New York and Philadelphia, and then I started recording when I was 9. When you're so young, you don't realize the impact of a New York Philharmonic debut. You're told to do something and you go out and do it and you don't ask too many questions. I think the questions come later when you're in your teens. By the time I was 14, I was spending probably half the year in Europe. So I was out of school a lot. I did most of my homework by e-mail or fax. We made it work because my professors were incredible."”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

Newsweek September 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14870541/site/newsweek/?page=6

People, Age, School, Moms

“I had this very interesting experience when I was about 13. I went to Finland and it was dead in the middle of winter. It was freezing cold. There was so much snow and I went to Ainola, which is Sibelius' house. It was completely isolated -- just snow and forest, trees and the lake, completely beautiful but very quiet. And very serene. And I thought, well, this is where he was composing his stuff. And his great symphonies and the violin concerto, this is where it basically came from. I also got this little handbook about Ainola and there's a part that says that Sibelius wouldn't allow running water in his house because it disturbed him and his thought processes. So his daughters had to go out to the well which was half a mile away and then bring back water. So I thought, "Wow!" This person was really that much into control and silence. So you go and look at the concerto after that and the way it starts in the beginning: very shimmery. Very beautiful. But in a way it is isolated, and you feel kind of lonely when you're playing that. And gradually of course it builds up into this great big climax when every single orchestra-like instrument known to mankind is clashing and you're trying to break out there and you're trying to play your heart out. But really it did help me realize what he is like.”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

PBS.org 1998 http://www.pbs.org/lflc/backstage/march3/chang.htm

Beauty, Way, Feeling, Tree

“Throughout Jack's violin solo at the Hollywood Bowl, the audience was glued to their seats. That was the only way he could get them to sit down.”

Zubin Mehta (1936) Indian conductor

Zubin Mehta in Irving Fein, Jack Benny: an Intimate Biography (1976), Volume 2, page 154.

Way

“How beautiful life is! Music and dancing! The violins are sobbing. The first stopper of a bottle of champagne bangs. And now there's a mad singing and shouting. Everybody joins in and sings and shouts! Embracing, friendship, eternal friendship! How beautiful the women are! Dressed in black and red. But you are the prettiest, Hertha! … Hey, you grumblers, go to hell! Music and dancing. The violins are sobbing. Women dressed in black and red. But you are the prettiest, Hertha!”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Wie schön ist das Leben! Musik und Tanz! Die Geigen schluchzen. Der erste Sektpfropfen knallt. Und nun ein tolles Singen und Schreien. Man singt und schreit mit. Umarmung, Freundschaft, ewige Freundschaft! Welch' schöne Frauen! In schwarz und rot! Und doch bist Du die Schönste, Hertha Holk! … Heda, ihr Miesmacher, der Teufel soll euch holen! Musik und Tanz. Die Geigen schluchzen. Frauen in schwarz und rot. Und doch bist Du die Schönste, Hertha Holk!
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Life, Women, Friendship, Beauty

“And then music. Wind chimes. And the sound of someone playing a violin. A fiddle. Or maybe just the music of a little dragon's wings. Maybe.”

Christopher Golden (1967) American writer

Page 63
Strangewood (1999)

Music

“I was three and a half years old when my father brought home a toy fiddle," playing "with which I am very happy fancies himself a street musician… I thought not and could not be happier than go from house to house with a violin."”

David Oistrakh (1908–1974) Soviet violinist

oistrakh.ru Biography of David Oistrakh http://www.oistrakh.ru/en/david_oistrakh/biography/.

Happiness, Home, Housing

“Pure mathematics is much more than an armoury of tools and techniques for the applied mathematician. On the other hand, the pure mathematician has ever been grateful to applied mathematics for stimulus and inspiration. From the vibrations of the violin string they have drawn enchanting harmonies of Fourier Series, and to study the triode valve they have invented a whole theory of non-linear oscillations.”

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

Mathematics, Study

“Many people do not realise that it takes considerably more art and skill to play the violin lightly than it does to play it loudly. Indeed, the best possible training for young violinists is learning to play pianissimo and without pressure.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Life class: thoughts, exercises, reflections of an itinerant violinist, p. 68

People, Art, Learning, Training

“First and foremost, yoga made its contribution to my quest to understand consciously the mechanics of violin playing, a quest which by 1951 had long been one of the themes of my life. All influences pointed to less tension, more effective application of energy, the breaking down of resistance in every joint, the coordination of all motions into one motion; and illustrated the profound truth that strength comes not from strength but from the subtle comprehension of process, proportion and balance.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: The Dawn of Indian Music in the West http://books.google.co.in/books?id=OSZKCXtx-wEC&pg=PA46, A&C Black, 24 April 2006, p. 46

Life, Truth, Understanding

“Whatever became of Kurt Schwitters' novel 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling' [Franz Müller's Wire Spring] several chapters of which we composed together? Is it buried under the bomb ruins of his house on Waldhausenstrasse in Hannover? For hours, Schwitters and I sat together and spun dialogue, in rhapsody. He took these writings and channeled them into his novel…We sat together again, writing 'Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling':
H. A.: The nightingales have had enough of your hymnal Karagösen. Play violin on parrots, but avoid the women red hood ans snow widow.
K. Schw.: Should I pe-trify something for you? Or would you like play cry together?
H. A.: Should we wash our tears or drown them?
K. Schw.: You are a sipsnipper, Since when do your diamonds bark?
H. A.: The water is getting hard. A fruit cries out loud and gives birth to a fish.
K. Schw.: I'll p-ut it in the sea, or should I st-ab you with it?”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Dialogue between Hans Arp and Kurt Schwitters, (1956) with introduction in: Franz Müllers Drahtfrühling-- Memories of Kurt Schwitters; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, commissioned by w:Rudi Fuchs, 2000, pp. 139-140
1950s

Women, Spring, Birth, Fish

“It was only in the evenings that I played the violin [c. 1999-1901, to earn his money for living]. During the day I was free to spend my time as I wished. With a few colours in a box, a canvas and a cheap easel under my arm, I would make my way to the Banks of the Seine... I painted to restore my peace of mind, to calm my desires and, above all, to purify myself a little... Make a career of painting. How I would have laughed if someone had talked to me about that! To be a painter is not a profession, no more than being an anarchist or a lover, a race-track rider..”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 66

Money, Peace, Way, Lovers

“When Mrs. Casaubon was announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his fingerends. Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man’s passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels? Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff. The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted— as easily as his mood. Dorothea’s entrance was the freshness of morning.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

World, Soul, Imagination, Mountain

“Truth be told, within the chapters that make up this dreadful story, the children will face snapping crabs, strict punishments, dripping fungus, comprehensive exams, violin recitals, S. O. R. E., and the metric system.”

Daniel Handler book The Austere Academy

The Austere Academy (2000)

Children, Truth

“How I regret not having told César Franck of my profound admiration for him and his music. After playing he Sonata for violin for the first time, I nearly wept over certain phrases. The beauty of it overwhelmed me.”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

Quoted in Monteux, Doris G (1965). It's All in the Music: The Life and Work of Pierre Monteux. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. OCLC 604146, p. 196

Beauty, Music, Time

“It was a bright September afternoon, and the streets of New York were brilliant with moving men…. He was pushed toward the ticket-office with the others, and felt in his pocket for the new five-dollar bill he had hoarded…. When at last he realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what, he stood stock-still amazed…. John… sat in a half-maze minding the scene about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin's swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady's arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all?… If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard, aye, bitter hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility…. When at last a soft sorrow crept across the violins, there came to him the vision of a far-off home — the great eyes of his sister, and the dark drawn face of his mother…. It left John sitting so silent and rapt that he did not for some time notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying politely, 'will you step this way please sir?'… The manager was sorry, very very sorry — but he explained that some mistake had been made in selling the gentleman a seat already disposed of; he would refund the money, of course… before he had finished John was gone, walking hurriedly across the square… and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat and said, 'John Jones you're a natural-born fool.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Then he went to his lodgings and wrote a letter, and tore it up; he wrote another, and threw it in the fire....
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. XIII: Of the Coming of John

Life, Men, Money, World

“Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. "She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race… They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;… that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;… that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ… 'Where does she get all them the'ries?'”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

marveled Uncle Whittier Smail.
Main Street (1920)

Love, Men, Children, Intelligence

“Get the bow going!
Let it scream to me:
Violin! Violin! Violin!”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

“[N]ot only must we seek the measure of motions and actions by themselves, but much more in comparison; for this is of excellent use and very general application. Now we find that the flash of a gun is seen sooner than its report is heard… and this is owing it seems to the motion of light being more rapid than that of sound. We find to that visible images are received by the sight faster than they are dismissed; thus the strings of the violin, when struck by the finger, are to appearance doubled and tripled, because the new image is received before the old one is gone; which is also why the reason why rings being spun round look like globes, and a lighted torch, carried hastily at night, seems to have a tail. And it was upon this inequality of motions in point of velocity that Galileo built his theory of flux and reflux of the sea; supposing that the earth revolved faster than the water could follow; and that the water was therefore first gathered in a heap and then fell down, as we see in a basin of water moved quickly. But this he devised upon an assumption which cannot be allowed, viz. that the earth moves; and also without being well informed as to the sexhorary motion of the tide.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 46
Novum Organum (1620), Book II

Light, Water, Appearance, Sea

“To regard one’s immortality as an exchange of matter is as strange as predicting the future of a violin case once the expensive violin it held has broken and lost its worth.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Ward No. 6, ch. 7 (1892)

Future

“I wanted to invent some kind of an instrument that would not operate mechanically, as does the piano, or the cello and the violin, whose bow movements can be compared to those of a saw. I conceived of an instrument that would create sound without using any mechanical energy, like the conductor of an orchestra.”

Léon Theremin (1896–1993) Russian inventor

Source: An Interview with Leon Theremin http://www.oddmusic.com/theremin/theremin_interview_1.html / Olivia Mattis and Leon Theremin in Bourges, France 16 June 1989.

“If I had to vote for what is the greatest piece of music ever conceived by the human mind, I'd have a hard time choosing between the Chaconne that ends Bach's second partita for unaccompanied violin or the his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue for the piano.”

Harry Markowitz (1927) American economist

On Bach http://www.amazon.com/review/R2P51SAA7ZY39Z

Music, Time

“Tis God gives skill,
But not without men's hands: He could not make
Antonio Stradivari's violins
Without Antonio.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Stradivarius (c. 1868)

Men, God

“I discovered that the computer is not like the violin; it doesn't take inborn genius or a lifetime of practice to get sweet music out of it.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Preface, p. x
Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008)

Music

“I try not to take my life for granted. I have friends who have tendinitis. That would kill me. A short break from the violin is fine, but if I don't touch it for three or four days, my fingers start to feel funny.”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

NEWSWEEK 1999 http://www.jeremycaplan.com/SarahChangInterview.htm

Life, Feeling

“On the artist, Charley Patton, who changed him: What happened was I was going out on a Saturday night, so I went into my mam’s bedroom, she’s got a double mirror, really kitsch 50s. So I’m in there, doing that, and she’s got an old alarm clock where the radio comes on, but she never learned how to do it properly. And it came on. […] I remember it was ten past three in the afternoon and it was winter, it was getting dark, and it was when the BBC had just started doing Telstar live things from America. It was some station in Memphis - one of those classic names, ‘RK 51’ or whatever. […] On it came and there’s this record. The satellite thing was a bit cloudy and it was a 78 record and there was compression on the radio, so it was this strange kind of musical blur with this voice coming through: Charley Patton. […] On that night I told the bass player of one of the local bands that I’d heard this record and it sounded weird, it sounded like a violin. He said, ‘No, it’s not a violin, it’s a slide guitar.’ I thought, ‘What’s one of them?”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2017

Music, Learning, Winter, Change

“… my mother will settle on the rug and unclip the bellows, pulling and pushing them with a mild aquatic motion with her left hand, the fingers of the right hand flowering upon the keys, the wedding-bangle suspended around her wrist. Each time the bellows are pushed, the round holes on the back open and close like eyes. Without the body music is not possible; it provides the hollow space for resonance as does the curved wooden box of the violin or the round urn of the sitar. At the moment of singing, breath tips in the swelling diaphragm as water does in a pitcher. The voice-box itself is a microscopic harp, its cords tautening and relaxing with each inflection.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Afternoon Raag (1993)

Music, Flowers, Wedding, Water

“There is no competition of sounds between a nightingale and a violin.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Dancing of Sounds http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21378/Dancing_of_Sounds <br class="br">From the poems written in English

“Tonight there was music in the saloon, a piano and a violin; two fat women with hard masculine faces and short haircuts. Their song was Over the Waves. Ta de da da, and I watched Camilla dancing with her beer tray. Her hair was so black, so deep and clustered, like grapes hiding her neck. This was a sacred place, this saloon. Everything here was holy, the chairs, the tables, that rag in her hand, that sawdust under her feet. She was a Mayan princess and this was her castle. I watched the tattered huaraches glide across the floor, and I wanted those huaraches. I would like them to hold in my hands against my chest when I fell asleep. I would like to hold them and breathe the odor of them.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Women, Music, Beer, Dance

“As a violin string or a harpsichord key vibrates and gives forth sound, so the cerebral fibres, struck by waves of sound, are stimulated to render or repeat the words that strike them.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

“Please start from the Bruch violin concerto again!”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Whilst rehearsing the Alpine Symphony, referring to the theme in which he quotes and extends the theme from the slow movement of the violin concerto by Max Bruch. The quote is reported in Kurt Wilhelm, Richard Strauss - an intimate portrait. Thames and Hudson, London, 1989, page 40. The theme's major appearence is in C major just after rehearsal mark 80 ("At the summit"), played by horns in unison:
Other sources

“As collage technique replaced oil paint, the cathode ray tube will replace the canvas. Someday artists will work with capacitors, resistors, and semiconductors as they work today with brushes, violins and junk. There are 4,000,000 dots per second on one television screen, just think of the variety of images you can get. It's so cool. It's like going to the moon.”

Nam June Paik (1932–2006) American video art pioneer

Manifesto, New York, October 1965, as cited in Jasia Reichardt (1971). The computer in art. p. 95
1960s

Thinking, Painting

“On August 8, 1944, when Himmler appointed SS General Kammler Commissioner General for the A-4 program, it looked as though the struggle for control had come to an end. I felt like a man who has devoted years of toil and affection to making a superb violin, a masterpiece which needs only tuning, and who then has to look on helplessly while the instrument is grabbed by a tough, unmusical woodman and scraped with a jagged lump of wood.”

Walter Dornberger (1895–1980) German general

“The first was the classical line, which could be traced back to my early childhood and the Beethoven sonatas I heard my mother play. This line takes sometimes a neo-classical form (sonatas, concertos), sometimes imitates the 18th century classics (gavottes, the Classical symphony, partly the Sinfonietta). The second line, the modern trend, begins with that meeting with Taneyev when he reproached me for the “crudeness” of my harmonies. At first this took the form of a search for my own harmonic language, developing later into a search for a language in which to express powerful emotions (The Phantom, Despair, Diabolical Suggestion, Sarcasms, Scythian Suite, a few of the songs, op. 23, The Gambler, Seven, They Were Seven, the Quintet and the Second Symphony). Although this line covers harmonic language mainly, it also includes new departures in melody, orchestration and drama. The third line is toccata or the “motor” line traceable perhaps to Schumann’s Toccata which made such a powerful impression on me when I first heard it (Etudes, op. 2, Toccata, op. 11, Scherzo, op. 12, the Scherzo of the Second Concerto, the Toccata in the Fifth Concerto, and also the repetitive intensity of the melodic figures in the Scythian Suite, Pas d’acier[The Age of Steel], or passages in the Third Concerto). This line is perhaps the least important. The fourth line is lyrical; it appears first as a thoughtful and meditative mood, not always associated with the melody, or, at any rate, with the long melody (The Fairy-tale, op. 3, Dreams, Autumnal Sketch[Osenneye], Songs, op. 9, The Legend, op. 12), sometimes partly contained in the long melody (choruses on Balmont texts, beginning of the First Violin Concerto, songs to Akhmatova’s poems, Old Granny’s Tales[Tales of an Old Grandmother]). This line was not noticed until much later. For a long time I was given no credit for any lyrical gift whatsoever, and for want of encouragement it developed slowly. But as time went on I gave more and more attention to this aspect of my work. I should like to limit myself to these four “lines,” and to regard the fifth, “grotesque” line which some wish to ascribe to me, as simply a deviation from the other lines. In any case I strenuously object to the very word “grotesque” which has become hackneyed to the point of nausea. As a matter of fact the use of the French word “grotesque” in this sense is a distortion of the meaning. I would prefer my music to be described as “Scherzo-ish” in quality, or else by three words describing the various degrees of the Scherzo—whimsicality, laughter, mockery.”

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) Ukrainian & Russian Soviet pianist and composer

Page 36-37; from his fragmentary Autobiography.
Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

Age, Dreams, Music, Search

“An instrument is not important. It is the way one plays that is important. Instruments don’t play by themselves. A piano is certainly not a better instrument than a synthesizer, but if a synthesizer is played like a piano, it becomes a very bad instrument. It doesn’t work. You can’t play a trumpet like a violin—it doesn’t go. That’s the problem—the players, not the instrument. Any instrument is a wonderful thing.”

Joe Zawinul (1932–2007) austrian composer and pianist

On how a musician's way of playing is important
Prasad interview (1997)

Way, Problem

“I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow workers.”

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

1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Money, Happiness, Pleasure

“With years a richer life begins,
The spirit mellows:
Ripe age gives tone to violins,
Wine, and good fellows.”

John Townsend Trowbridge (1827–1916) American author

Three Worlds.

Life, Age, Wine

“What's the use of dying in a ward surrounded by a lot of groaning and croaking incurables? Wouldn't it be much better to throw a party with that twenty-seven thousand and take poison and depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by lovely drunken girls and happy friends?”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Book One in 'Unwelcome Visitors', MG
The Master and Margarita (1967)

Love, Happiness, World, Girl

“The house was filled with the piano and violin. I turned towards the art of painting.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Art, Painting, Housing

“Balzac says that many young husbands are so ignorant of women that they make him think of orang-outangs trying to play the violin.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Marriage

Women, Thinking

““It was an old passion,” he said. “I haven’t touched a violin for months. I didn’t know what that would be like.”
“What is it like?” she asked.
He began to walk so that she almost missed his answer. “An amputation,” he whispered.”

Octavia E. Butler book Clay's Ark

Source: Clay's Ark (1984), Chapter 14 (p. 533)

Passion

“Studies of violin players by Thomas Elbert have shown that the region of the brain responsible for moving the left hand… increases in size as a result of practice.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Study

“The long sobs of
The violins
Of autumn
Lay waste my heart
With monotones
Of boredom.”

Paul Verlaine Chanson d'automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon cœur
D'une langueur
Monotone.
"Chanson d'automne", line 1, from Poèmes saturniens (1866); Sorrell p. 24

Autumn, Heart

“All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Part I, section xxii, stanza 3
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)

Bird, Silence, Dance, Night

“A utopia or heaven on earth is a place where every would-be Mozart has access to a piano and violin before the age of five, where every would-be Beethoven is empowered to compose music in spite of deafness, where every individual can get quality education regardless of their socioeconomic status and place of residence, and where everyone is given good health and freedom to pursue their dreams.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Health, Age, Education, Dreams

“He, who was awarded the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan, gritted his teeth to master English and exposed yoga to the West, teaching such luminaries like violin maestro Yehudi Menuhin and author Aldous Huxley.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar passes away at 95

“Tonight there was music in the saloon, a piano and a violin; two fat women with hard masculine faces and short haircuts. Their song was Over the Waves.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ta de da da, and I watched Camilla dancing with her beer tray. Her hair was so black, so deep and clustered, like grapes hiding her neck. This was a sacred place, this saloon. Everything here was holy, the chairs, the tables, that rag in her hand, that sawdust under her feet. She was a Mayan princess and this was her castle. I watched the tattered huaraches glide across the floor, and I wanted those huaraches. I would like them to hold in my hands against my chest when I fell asleep. I would like to hold them and breathe the odor of them.
Ask the Dust (1939)

Women, Music

“He boxed as though he were playing the violin.”

Sugar Ray Robinson (1921–1989) American boxer

Bert Randolph Sugar a well known boxing writerhttp://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00016439.html
About Sugar Ray sourced

Box