A Quote by Ricky Jay

I'm probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion. — © Ricky Jay
I'm probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion.
I started taking piano lessons when I was about four years old. My parents were both musicians. So I took piano lessons. I didn't like the lessons very much, but I was enchanted by music. Music always transported me somewhere. Singing made feel good and being able to play the piano made me feel good.
My goal was to play drums, but my father made me take piano lessons. He told me I needed to learn to read music first, so I took lessons for six years. I thank God that he made me take those lessons, because it taught me a tremendous amount.
My parents started with very little and were the only ones in their families to graduate from college. As parents, they focused on education, but did not stop at academics - they made sure that we knew music, saw art and theatre and traveled - even though it meant budgeting like crazy.
I remember studying so hard for so long and saying to my parents, 'I will be a teacher.' And they were looking at me like, 'Girl... you just want to be on stage. Stop pretending.' So when I chose to do music, they were relieved. My parents were more intelligent and lucid than I was.
Simon Bolivar, when history led him - and as Karl Marx said, men can make history, but only as far as history allows us to do so - when history took Bolivar and made him the leader of the independence process in Venezuela, he made that process revolutionary.
But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.
I'm much more of a kid now than I was when I was a kid. I was the kind of kid who was valedictorian, a straight-A student. My mom used to say, "Please stop studying and get outside."
Lessons of Life: When you stop yearning, When you stop aspiring. You stop living.
In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I emphasize the word: "stop". I'm not saying drop bombs, make war, but stop the aggressor. The means used to stop him would have to be evaluated.
I traveled and made money and I wouldn't let anybody get between me and my music. If I belong to anything, I belong to my music. ...What you were born to do, you don't stop to think, should I? could I? would I? I only think, will I? And, I shall!
Some of us are born with a weakness for music. As a baby, music would stop whatever thought I was having. If I was worried, it would stop me worrying; if I was crying, it would stop me crying. Music was a healing thing for me.
When I was a kid, I used to stop bullies. I'd get so angry when I saw people being bullied. I'd be like, 'Stop doing that to him!'
My parents made me take piano lessons from 1st grade to when I graduated from high school, and music never came to me as naturally as my other more visual artistic talents.
If it wasn't for Kenny Rogers, I don't think I would be in country music. He was that guy when I was a kid - his music and 'Hee Haw' made me perk my ears up and made me say, 'What is this? I want to hear more of that.' He was that catalyst for me to start this whole run in country music.
Earl Scruggs had this thing that it wasn't just the technique or even the instrument. It was him. There was this soulful quality that came through that made you - if you're somebody like me who was, I guess, supposed to play the banjo, it made you stop in your tracks, and you couldn't do anything until you got done hearing him play, and then immediately you'd have to go try and find a banjo.
History is made by masses of people. One man, or ten men, don't start the earthquakes and don't stop them either. Only hero worshipers and ignorant historians think they do.
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