I hate being manipulated by song. Don't tell me what I should be feeling. I don't want cellos or violins to be telling me that I should be bawling right now.
I've decided to make my main priority for the next two years not playing the violin, but training for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
The moment you tell someone else is the moment you become a whiner and the world’s smallest violin starts to play. The truth is, we all have problems.
A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums.
I'm a pretty good drummer. I'm pretty good at guitar, bass and piano. I can play accordion; I'm not virtuoso. I've played cello before. My sister played it, and I know how to play it, but I'm not the best. Violin is kind of the same thing.
We can't do a modern Batman continually beating up thugs in zoot suits with tommy guns in violin cases. The game has to move on. It has to feel relevant.
Take a sound from whatever source, a note on a violin, a scream, a moan, a creaking door, and there is always this symmetry between the sound basis, which is complex and has numerous characteristics which emerge through a process of comparison within...
I've played every instrument you could possibly think of for 10 minutes. So I'm mediocre at everything. I can play drums, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, clarinet, flute... Just not well.
A cello can sound like so many instruments, but it's only one, you know, like a guitar; it has percussive qualities. It can sing like the violin, you know, like a voice.
You know, the truth is that us actors would all like to believe we re-invent the wheel, every time we play a character. But, we're human beings and our instruments are not violins, they are our bodies and our consciousness and our collective life exp...
Every single one of us can do things that no one else can do - can love things that no one else can love. We are like violins. We can be used for doorstops, or we can make music. You know what to do.
My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.
I'm a little less hungry as an actor than I used to be. When you're a director, you're the conductor of the orchestra, and when you're an actor, you're playing the violin. There's a thrill to each of them, but as the conductor, you get the fuller sou...
[first lines] Violin Man: What if I could put him in front of you? The man that ruined your life. If I could guarantee that you'd get away with it, would you kill him?
[rubbing his thumb and forefinger together] Mr. Pink: Do you know what this is? It's the world's smallest violin playing just for the waitresses.
When it comes to orchestral music, whenever I see a concert with orchestra and strings, and I arrive and there are speakers up, my heart always sinks a little bit, and I think, 'It's going to be down to some sound guy's ideas.' Contact microphones on...
I guess as a kid, I was always creative, and I was involved in music, like piano and violin and choir, so I always knew - I always knew that I wanted to do something that would allow me to be who I am. Generally, that was creatively, imaginatively.
I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.
I play guitar a bit. I'm trying to learn drums - I feel like I can play violin. I've never tried, but I just feel like I can.
The eye’s perception of texture is pale compared to the lips’, and I didn’t know what velvety was until I knew it with my lips. Oh, kissing. Oh, violin boy.
