A Quote by James O'Barr

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

James O'Barr

Quote Topics

Arm His Man Nerves Own Playing Strings Violin

Quote Author

James O'Barr
American - Artist
Born: January 1, 1960

It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.

Elie Wiesel

Each of our passions, even love, has a stomach that must not be overloaded. We must in everything write the word 'finis' in time; we must restrain ourselves, when it becomes urgent; we must draw the bolt on the appetite, play a fantasia on the violin, then break the strings with our own hand. The Wise man is he who knows when and how to stop.

Victor Hugo

I was playing violin for a long time, about 6 years. It takes a while. You need very patient people in your house when you have a violin.

Kevin Eubanks

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument. Isaac Stern takes good care of his violin. What if everybody jumped on his violin?

Marilyn Monroe

The violin has always been important for me. My mom was a single mom and we moved around a lot, and so the violin was always the one constant I had. I always feel better when I had my violin. Playing it is cathartic.

Amanda Shires

Well my dad forced me into playing the violin when I was about three and it all started from there. I went to Suzuki for violin lessons, and you learn to play by ear instead of reading music.

Tom Misch

I started playing the guitar when I was 14. I'm not superstitious about guitars, but I do need strings to be old because that's part of my sound, and I don't like steel strings.

Jose Gonzalez

When Jack Benny plays the violin, it sounds as though the strings are still in the cat.

Fred Allen

I'd always loved strings. When I was in high school and saw strings playing on stage, an orchestra or a symphony, all those bows moving at the same time... wow.

Isaac Hayes

Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood, The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm. The blinded man sees with his ears and hands As much or more than once with both his eyes.

Robert Graves

Marriage is like a violin. After the beautiful music is over, the strings are still attached.

Jacob Braude

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.

Cormac McCarthy

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

Edmond de Goncourt

I know that a translation of a work of literature is like playing a violin concerto on the piano. You can do this. You can do this very successfully on one strict condition: never try to force the piano to produce the sounds of the violin. This will be grotesque.

Amos Oz

I started playing violin when I was about five years old and I learned to read a little bit of music, but that's all been long, long forgotten! I actually quit violin to teach myself guitar and just went from there.