Favorite Piano Quotes

Here are some of my favorite piano quotes which you may find informative and amusing. Some relate to piano playing, others to the piano as a musical instrument.

Also included are some music quotes of more general interest.

PIANO QUOTES:

"I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience."
John Bon Jovi

"It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me."
Dave Brubeck

"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."
Johann Sebastian Bach

"Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist."
Michael Levine

"I believe in using the entire piano as a single instrument capable of expressing every possible musical idea."
Oscar Peterson

"Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best'."
Oscar Wilde

"The piano as a medium for expression is a whole world by itself. No other instrument can fill or replace its own say in the world of emotion, sentiment, poetry, imagery and fancy"
Leopold Godowsky, Pianist

”I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.”
Billy Joel

"Now, guitar was pretty cool. Everybody knew something on the guitar. So I wanted to play guitar, but I told my dad if he wanted me to keep studying something, I'd like to study piano."
Jackson Browne

"No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery."
Kenneth Miller

“I always make sure that the lid over the keyboard is open before I start to play.”
Artur Schnabel, Austrian Pianist, when asked the secret of piano playing

"Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it."
Tom Lehrer

BEYOND PIANO QUOTES-OTHER MUSIC QUOTES:

"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 get most joy in life out of music."
Albert Einstein

"In opera, there is always too much singing.”
Claude Debussy

"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility. There are so few of us left."
Oscar Levant, Pianist and Author

"When you play music you discover a part of yourself that you never knew existed."
Bill Evans

”Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable."
Leonard Bernstein

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."
Victor Hugo

"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'."
Bob Newhart

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles in 1962

"It (Einstein’s discovery of Relativity) occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception."
Albert Einstein

"Remember: Information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom; wisdom is not truth; truth is not beauty; beauty is not love; love is not music; music is the best."
Frank Zappa