A Quote by Bernard Sumner

The guitarist always looks a bit clever because he's got so many strings and apparently knows what to do with them. — © Bernard Sumner
The guitarist always looks a bit clever because he's got so many strings and apparently knows what to do with them.
Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?
I collect many ethnic instruments, and as a guitarist, I'm usually able to play any sort of instrument - as long as it has strings. That's why I like to experiment with different sounds.
For me the world has always been more of a puppet show. But when one looks behind the curtain and traces the strings upward he finds they terminate in the hands of yet other puppets, themselves with their own strings which trace upward in turn, and so on. In my own life I saw these strings whose origins were endless enact the deaths of great men in violence and madness. Enact the ruin of a nation.
I like the strings. I always have. Because that's how it feels. But the strings make pain seem more fatal than it is, I think. We're not as frail as the strings would make us believe. And I like the grass, too. The grass got me to you, helped me to imagine you as an actual person. But we're not different sprouts from the same plant. I can't be you. You can't be me. You can imagine another well – but never quite perfectly, you know?
Many persons are always kept poor, because they are too visionary. Every project looks to them like certain successes, and therefore they keep changing from one business to another, always in hot water, always ‘under the harrow’.
Advisers who think that they are very clever while all around them are a bit thick, and that all the problems of the world would be solved if the thick listened to the clever, are liable to be disappointed.
When you're first starting out, there's always the temptation to hide behind distortion because it lets you get away with murder. But, when it comes to rhythm work, you've gotta back off that gain control a bit, especially if you're playing with another guitarist.
For an electric guitarist to solo effectively on an acoustic guitar you need to develop tricks to avoid the expectation of sustain that comes from playing electrics. Try cascades, for example. Drop arpeggios over open strings, and let the open strings sing as you pick with your fingers. It's kind of a country style of playing, but it works very well in-between heavily strummed parts and fingered lead lines.
When I went over to the States to promote Outrider, everyone was telling me I was a blues guitarist. I'm not a bloody blues guitarist. I'm a guitarist.
It's supposed to be a good thing that he's got this dialogue started. To me, I think, I just took away something bad from it, because, apparently he had to do this not to convince them of anything. To educate them.
We have certain things where we know they exist or "everybody knows they exist," but naturally nobody can photograph them, because they are so super secret. For example, the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center exists, but nobody knows how it looks, but it's a so called bunker where he can survive a nuclear attack.
Going onstage without my primary instrument is like being a guitarist and going up onstage with no guitar waiting for you. What do you do? That's why performance is painful for me, because I feel like I am always in a strange place with a bit of a handicap.
A lot of film directors are quite scared of actors. They are a bit of a nightmare sometimes, but I like them. It looks like cunning, but you try to get extra things from them all the time, by stealth, by making them feel confident, so they trust you and you can push a bit.
Well, I don't think that the Obama administration knows what's Jesus, what belongs to Jesus and what belongs to them. That's my big gripe. Apparently, he doesn't know. But then, that's because he's not a Christian. He's Muslim.
Whether you watch 'Law and Order' all the time or not, everyone knows what it looks like. Everyone knows what the courtroom looks like, what the police precinct looks like.
The future of Arab films is absolutely up to Arabs and no one else. They've got the equipment, they've got the will, they've got the talent, now they just need a little bit of history behind them and a bit of cultural relaxation.
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