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 kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“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

“(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

“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

“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

“Zebras are piano horses. I think about that when I’m swinging a golf club, and it brings a musical cowboy element to my game that another player might not be able to buy in a vending machine.”
― Jarod Kintz, To be good at golf you must go full koala bear

“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

“Growing up, my mom gave me the choice of either golf lessons or piano, and of course I chose the more musical option. That's how I learned to make triumphant trumpet noises with my mouth.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.”
― Bill Evans

“They say that if you grow up with a piano in your house, you think everyone has a piano in their house”
― Stephen King, Hearts in Suspension

“When we see a broken piano, we still press its keys to see if it is playing, and this is called hope! Hope is a fascinating desire not to lose things!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Mental tension is in inverse proportion to physical tension.”
― Heinrich Neuhaus, The Art of Piano Playing

“It was then, at what would also become my own little slice of Heaven, that I met one of my oldest friends, the piano, and it was love at first chord.”
― LUMI , Eleanora's Sundown