Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always listened to music while I write, but none of my work has been so directly impacted by a song as my new novel, 'So Cold the River,' for which the brilliant strings piece 'Short Trip Home,' composed by Edgar Meyer and featuring the incredible Joshua Bell on violin, inspired much of the story.
Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing - no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn't happen that much anymore.
We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party.
It is a mystic maxim that the lower in the scale of evolution a being is placed, the more certainly it responds to the planetary rays, and conversely the higher we ascend in the scale of attainment, the more the man conquers and rules his stars, freeing himself from the leading strings of the Divine Hierarchies.
We had a music teacher in sixth grade, and I saw her tune her guitar. I said, 'Whoa. There's a certain way to do this.' I bought a packet of strings - some of mine were broken - and had her tune it for me. For a while, I just kept it like that. But I got the Internet finally, when I was 14, and started learning.
The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical.
I learned everything by ear and played all the different instruments. So then I was able to find a guitar. That was, like, in the seventh grade. And then I didn't know how to put my fingers on all the different strings, so I had to figure out how to do it upside down and backwards, and I still play that way today.
There are so many things that can go wrong while performing. I've had violin strings break; I've had pants that were slowly falling down, and I'd have to pull them up in between every song; my hairpiece was falling out, so a big chunk of hair was just flapping around as I danced, and I've completely fallen on my butt.
The relatively unpredictable flow of funds to humanitarian organizations, and the bureaucratic strings often attached to them, can have a highly negative impact on an organization's ability to plan and execute programmes effectively. We need to be able to rely on predictable income flows to plan sustainable programmes.
Working with Prince, it's kind of like he's opened up this whole new world, especially with the horn players. And I'm like, 'Man, only if I had strings on this album, too.' And I'm like, 'I wish I had an orchestra.' So I just, you know - I just wonder what's next, you know. I just want to constantly push myself for more.
I think that, in the beginning, you think, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.' And then, with the more movies you make, you are like, 'I don't know if I want to be that anymore. I think what I am looking for is something different.' I like acting, but a lot of times, stardom comes with a lot of strings attached.
If I can stay healthy, then I can wrestle every single week. I want to make every single town that I can, see the whole world, feel every crowd in every arena, and pull those emotional strings. I can't explain what it feels like to be in the center stage connecting with thousands of people, but I'm having the best time doing it.
Regardless of the gender of the highest wage earner, the balance of power in the relationship will suffer if the higher earner uses control of the purse strings as a system of reward and punishment. It will also suffer if the lower earner takes a chippy, haughty attitude to spending money they haven't actually generated themselves.
Living in Manhattan opened me to whole new sets of things to envy, study, gather and imagine stealing. A full-size 1809 German harp, beautifully painted with three goddesses, covered in a pea-green coat of great silvery refinement: mine for $180. Though all its strings were broken, its beauty let it claim a quarter of my one - bedroom.
When we first started, in the early Eighties, we had some crappy guitars - Japanese knockoffs that wouldn't hold standard tuning. Later, we'd shove drumsticks or screwdrivers under strings to scheme new noises, sure. But initially, open tuning was a technique used to make our cheap guitars sound better. It wasn't academic or conceptual.
I think it is harder to scare young people because there is an ironic hipster stance that you have to take in relation to pop culture. You know you're being manipulated. People are so aware of the manipulation. We're all aware that movies toy with us and pull our strings. There was a time when people just didn't acknowledge that as much.
Open Wings - Broken Strings is an opportunity for you to get to the heart of your favorite artists and their songs in a unique and compelling way. Stripped down, intimate and acoustic, you'll hear the strings on the guitar vibrate and buzz, the vocal chords hum and pulsate as the songs you love come to life like you never knew they could.
I always want to try new things, and 'Mean Machine' has given me that chance. I have got plans to carry on acting and would love to play all sorts of roles - you'll see that there's more strings to my bow!
A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
Shouldn't the low strings be at the bottom?
Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what discord follows!
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
What is the universe? The universe is a symphony of vibrating strings...we are nothing but melodies. We are nothing but cosmic music played out on vibrating strings and membranes.
Even when tied in a thousand knots, the string is still but one.
Well, I guess that early 12 string. The first Martin I bought. I bought it around 1957 with money I earned as a janitor assistant. I bought brand new. I still have that.
I absolutely remember when I decided upon playing Ernie Ball strings, and it was right then and there at the guitar store up in Seattle when I picked up my first guitar ever. They said, 'What kind of strings should we put on it?' And I just looked at the brightest color package and said, 'That one!'
It's amazing how well real strings blend with metal, like that whole sound.
Zen was an attempt to get back to the purest teachings of the Buddha -enlightenment without strings.
But once that string gets cut, kid, you can't uncut it. Do you get what I'm saying?
String Theory describes energy and matter as being composed of tiny, wiggling strands of energy that look like strings. And the pitch of a string's vibration determines the nature of its effect.
One very important aspect of string theory is definitely testable. That was the prediction of supersymmetry, which emerged from string theory in the early '70s.
I found I could speak through the guitar. Because you have the feel of the strings with both hands and it's up against your solar plexus, it's real, and so there's nothing between you and the music.
I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.
'Muntazir' has a very feel-good vibe to it. It's Strings' signature composition, especially the pre-chorus. I thoroughly enjoyed lending my vocals to it.
As for the symphonic activities... when I was a student at the Eastman School of Music, I became exposed to a lot more musical forms, elements, opportunities, and I fell in love with strings and their uses.
We built something very special with Gaslight, and we don't want to mess with that sound too much. But I've always wanted to do a record where I can put strings or organs or pianos or whatever on it.
I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.
All my records - 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix,' 'Wichita Lineman,' 'Galveston,' 'Rhinestone Cowboy,' 'Dreams of the Everyday Housewife' - they all had strings on them.
My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
I would hardly change the sorrowful words of the poets for their glad ones. Tears dampen the strings of the lyre, but they grow the tensor for it, and ring even the clearer and more ravishingly.
Now, when I have a four-string that I take on the road with me, it's a regular Martin. I bought a decent Martin with a pickup in it, and then I just take off the strings and have four strings on it.
Caretaking is different from care giving. Care giving has no second agendas or hidden motives. The care is given from love for the joy of giving without expectation, no strings attached. It cannot be manipulated or discouraged because love cannot be manipulated or discouraged.
You know, for most of its life bluegrass has had this stigma of being all straw hats and hay bales and not necessarily the most sophisticated form of music. Yet you can't help responding to its honesty. It's music that finds its way deep into your soul because it's strings vibrating against wood and nothing else.
My big break was really Liz Meriwether saw me in a movie called 'Paper Heart' and really liked it, and then saw me in a movie called 'Ceremony' because she knew Max Winkler and said, 'I want you to be in 'No Strings Attached,' but you gotta audition for it.' From that it was easier for her to get me in 'New Girl.'
A guitar is just theoretically built wrong. Each string is an interval of fourths, and then the B string is off. Theoretically, that's not right, all the strings should be off.
My whammy system is set up so I can yank the bar up as well as do dive-bombs with it. This means that if I accidentally push down on the bridge with my palm, my strings go sharp and sound out of tune. I make sure this never happens by never resting my hand on the bridge when muting. I always do my muting just in front of the bridge.
Unlike a high-wire walker, I don't think any musician strikes the wires of a piano or draws a bow across a violin's strings primarily for the kick of an adrenalin fix. There is danger on stage, but dropped notes are not broken bones; a memory lapse is not a tumble to the ground.
I'm a firm believer that lighting affects mood, and twinkly lights on strings bring something magical to occasions ranging from concerts to weddings, though I'm fond of using them as year-round home decor. There's a reason why they're sometimes called fairy lights. When the night is right, there aren't any strings at all.
I don't care how inventive you are; once you introduce strings into the ensemble for a horror film, you're entering into a world where a tradition has been thoroughly established. So it's repeated use over the years is like, 'Oh God, another film with strings, another spooky movie with strings.'
I usually decide if I'm going to do a movie based on if I like the script or not. I thought 'Pulling Strings' had every single element that a classic romantic comedy needs to be a success. It's very well written. The cast was amazing. It was a decision I made based on the power of the script.