Quotes About Expression

Some songs are just going to be acoustic with just maybe some light background stuff going on and maybe violin or something like that. Or sax - I mean, I'm definitely having some sax. That's just what I love. It's going to be jazz-rock stuff. That's what I'm aiming for.

While I was writing the songs for 'Fuzz Universe,' I was immersing myself in Bulgarian Female Choir music, Baroque lute and violin pieces, Johnny Cash songs about trains, cows, mules, and mining coal, the Bee Gees, and Ronnie James Dio.

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've played the violin since I was seven but stopped because there was a stage when it became 'uncool'. I was listening to Nirvana and wanted to play the guitar, so I ditched the violin.

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.

My grandma has a picture of Louis Farrakhan playing violin in her house.

Often the 'lead' of a classical song will have something really cool to its melody that - even though it might be a violin or something doing it in the song - I end up wanting to try something like that with my voice.

I love classical music and have been playing violin since I was seven. Music helps me to express feelings in a way words often cannot.

Cello is my first instrument, then piano, drums, bass, violin, recorder, saxophone, but I'd never play them live!

It is very unnatural to dance while playing the violin. I had to practice so hard to learn how to do it, but now it is part of my expression, and it comes naturally. I have to know a song perfectly before I can even begin to move.

I realised, however, that you can't sing when you're playing the violin - or at least I can't - and as that aspect of performing is important to me I shifted to the piano.

Kids would come up to me after concerts and give me drawings they've made of violins or, you know, landscapes with a violin floating in it or some sketch of a concert or a portrait of me.

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.

I was leaving my violin out of a lot of songs, and that's a strange thing to do because I've been playing the violin since I was 2. It's a part of me. Adding pedals and sounds is great because I get to play the instrument I feel most comfortable on and the one I feel gives my truest expression when I'm making a solo or anything like that.

I always wanted to do a song with a violin; I always loved the sound of the instrument, especially for melodic stuff.

A lot of people were getting million-dollar deals from music I felt was trash, because their videos were going viral. I wanted to put out music that had soul, because that's what was missing.

I think the kind of unexpected I really love is when you open books and the actual way of writing is different and interesting. Like reading Virginia Woolf for the first time or Lawrence Durrell for the first time.

Virginia Woolf was wrong. You do not need a room of your own to write.

I write about Texas, New York, California and Virginia, and they're all important places in my repertoire.

When I was a 12-year-old middle-schooler in Richmond, Virginia, my local newspaper published an op-ed that I wrote all by myself.

I'm told I am over-choosy, and I shocked everybody by doing Jeffrey Archer. I did that to annoy everybody; sometimes, between Medea and Virginia Woolf, you can get punch-drunk.

I would like to sit down with Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, PJ Harvey, and Bjork. That would be a good dinner in my mind. Strong women. I think I would enjoy that.

It is okay to experiment with language. Writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf experimented with writing, but basically, one must have a familiarity with the language. And to have that, one must respect it.

I was about to leave L.A. because I didn't find enough soul in the musicians. Back in Virginia, it was just leaking soul everywhere.