George Shearing Quotes

#1. I loved when my dad was home. He liked to sit in the living room and watch boxing and baseball on TV. Or he'd be tinkering around or listening to records by his musician buddies - George Shearing, Oscar Peterson and the Jackie Gleason Orchestra.

Natalie Cole

#2. Being in front of the audience, letting my audience see me in person - it is real intimate, you get to make them laugh and cry, they get to feel you. And then afterward, we go out and do a meet-and-greet session with the fans. It was just a wonderful experience. I really, really enjoyed it.

Vivica Fox

#3. Having a set, popular formula does inhibit you.

George Shearing

#4. I think in certain areas the demand is greater than it has ever been, and my business is better than it's been in 30 years. The music business is so precarious, as you know-you've got to make it while you can make it, and that's exactly what we're doing.

George Shearing

#5. If you establish an identity, you build a monster-and thats right, youve got to live with it. Of course, you can enjoy it, too.

George Shearing

#6. I think it was Duke Ellington who once said that we're always most pleased with our current record. I mean, you have to assume that you learn from one, and you do something better next time.

George Shearing

#7. All my musical foundations go back to the age of 3. My family tell me that I used to listen to the old crystal set, then go to the piano and pick out the tune that I just heard.

George Shearing

#8. I don't like ten dollar words. Anybody can do anything with a thesaurus. Make me feel a certain way with the least amount of words possible and I respect that.

Rude Jude

#9. Honesty is never wrong.

Terry Brooks

#10. I don't like freedom jazz - I think it's void of roots and void of foundation.

George Shearing

#11. Can anybody be given a great degree of creativity? No. They can be given the equipment to develop it-if they have it in them in the first place.

George Shearing

#12. I was born in London in 1919. I first went to America in 1946 for a three-month holiday. Then I came back, worked here for almost a year sold up my home and went back on immigration in 1947.

George Shearing

#13. You know, when you've established a certain thing, what can you do? You're stuck with it.

George Shearing

#14. The voice of the waves was now mixed with strange sounds; laughter, running feet and the clanging of great bells far out to sea. Snufkin lay still and listened. dreaming and remembering his trip round world. Soon I must set out again, he thought. But not yet.

Tove Jansson

#15. Perfect retention. I don't think I could do that-I've never disciplined myself to do it. I suppose a lot of it is a question of discipline. Which improvisation is not.

George Shearing

#16. The way it works: The orchestra plays a few selections of its own and I terminate the first part of the programme on piano, usually with a movement from a Mozart concerto.

George Shearing

#17. DTH, as in direct to home?" she asked the question i had prepared my answer for.
"No DTH here is direct to heart," i said, hoping she would laugh this time.

Sumrit Shahi

#18. I always tell people, it took me 10 minutes and 35 years in the business. I get tired of playing it ["Lullaby of Birdland"], but not of collecting the royalties.

George Shearing

#19. Can anybody be given creativity? No. Only equipment to develop it if it's in them in the first place.

George Shearing

#20. Learn the rules and then break them in such a way as to exercise good taste.

George Shearing

#21. In the construction of a country, it is not the practical workers but the idealists and planners that are difficult to find.

Sun Yat-sen

#22. Happiness is seeing Bear Bluff in your rearview mirror, but you better look damn quick.

James Patterson

#23. When people ask me how is it I was a musician, I facetiously say that I'm a firm believer in reincarnation and in a previous life I was Johann Sebastian Bach's guide dog.

George Shearing

#24. I don't think you can contrive any sound.

George Shearing

#25. We're travelling for about nine-and-a-half months a year.

George Shearing

#26. Teddy Wilson, I think, said a little while ago that it's much easier to come in and play whatever comes into your mind, without obeying any of the laws of bass line and harmony and so on.

George Shearing

#27. I studied with a blind teacher from about 5 until I was 16, at two different schools. From the age of 12 until 16, I was in a boarding school-which, I believe, at that time was compulsory for blind children.

George Shearing

#28. When Hank Jones had his night off, I would get somebody to take my place as intermission pianist and I'd play the show with Ella, so I would get a chance to play with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith as well.

George Shearing

#29. My affiliation with England is borne out by the fact that I do come back for periodic visits.

George Shearing

#30. In Braille you write your flat sign first and then your note.

George Shearing

#31. I haven't written an awful lot recently, but I think I probably will start again very shortly. Being so much on the road, when you have a couple of weeks off, you're likely to avoid sitting at the piano, and taping, and giving yourself more work to do.

George Shearing

#32. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stay the course, but also plot another one. Adapt.

Sarah J. Maas