15 Beautiful Piano Quotes Every Pianist Will Love

It’s hard to put the joy of making music on the piano into words, but this difficulty hasn’t stopped many great minds from trying!

To celebrate the beauty of this grand instrument, we put together this collection of wise words and quotes about piano. Which one is your favorite?

15 Inspiring Piano Quotes

1. “Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.” – Wassily Kandinsky

2. “Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you’ve split yourself open.

And when they see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need need, need need, need need, pianos do not run. And so she plays.” – Francesca Lia Block

3. “When you play, never mind who listens to you.” – Robert Schumann

4. “Everybody told me this ‘girl on the piano thing’ was never going to work.” – Tori Amos

5. “I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do.

And a piano is just a piano. It’s made out of so much wood and wires and little hammers and big ones, and ivory. While there’s only so much you can do with it, the only way to find this out is to try; to try and make it do everything.” – James Baldwin

6. “The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.” – Thelonious Monk

7. “What has keys but can’t listen to the beauty it unlocks? A piano.
” – Jarod Kintz

8. “Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.” – Tom Lehrer

9. “Sometimes I feel like a melody doesn’t have anything to do with me, but it’s just something that comes, is accumulated from me playing on the piano, and then this little creature just appears.” – Agnes Obel

10. “One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.” – Paul McCartney

11. “The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colors in your mind.” – Maria Cristina Mena

12. “Without a piano I don’t know how to stand, don’t know what to do with my hands.” – Norah Jones

13. “I’m an interpreter of stories. When I perform it’s like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.” – Nat King Cole

14. “Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano.” – Frederic Chopin

15. “You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you’ve looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.” – Robert Schumann

Do you know of any great quotes about piano that we missed? Share your favorite piano quotes in the comments section below!

 Photos by knownaa, art_you, Michele Ursino, and Luigi Rosa