I'll never forget the first time I heard Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Partita in E Major' for violin. It was in a late-1980s television commercial, of all things. As a young violinist at the time, it enchanted me - it was so pure, precise, and unadorned.

Ajit Pai

I played violin and got into that Suzuki program in the second grade.

I started taking piano lessons when I was about 5, and there was always a lot of music in my family: my parents both play instruments, my grandparents were classical violinists, and my grandfather was actually a music professor and a conductor.

Adam Schlesinger

Music Men Family

I'll never forget the first time I heard Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Partita in E Major' for violin. It was in a late-1980s television commercial, of all things. As a young violinist at the time, it enchanted me - it was so pure, precise, and unadorned.

Ajit Pai

Time Art Young

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?

Albert Einstein

Happiness Violin Table

We developed our own type of Igudesman and Joo electric violin, let's say, and funny enough, the shape of it was developed by the head technician of Steinway. It's actually an electric violin, which is made from the stick that holds up the piano lid.

Aleksey Igudesman

Funny Which Way

Instruments are a phenomenal investment, especially violins and violas and celli, because the value really doesn't go down, and it just rises up at incredible speed and has done, and I believe will continue to do so, because these rare instruments are not getting more. They are getting less and less through the years.

Aleksey Igudesman

Men Years Year

I do use an electric violin. Actually, my regular electric violin, which I sometimes use, is by Ned Steinburger.

Aleksey Igudesman

Time Which Violin

There's a million people who can go out and play the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto brilliantly, but we're the only ones who can do 'A Little Nightmare Music.'

Aleksey Igudesman

Music Men Who

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.

Alexa Chung

Yin Violin Us

I started with the classical violin when I was 6, and I guess it went well.

Alison Krauss

Art Wit Well

You know, if you really want to fiddle the old-time way, you've got to learn the dance. The contra-dances, hoedowns. It's all in the rhythm of the bow. The great North Carolina fiddle player Tommy Jarrell said, 'If a feller can't bow, he'll never make a fiddler. He might make a violin player, but he'll never make no fiddler.'

Alison Krauss

Time Great Car

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.

Alissa White-Gluz

Cool Wit Will

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.

Amanda Shires

Men Great Art

I had no idea I was gonna be a songwriter, because I was too young to know my own evolution. I started playing the violin as a way to express myself because I didn't have a lot of vocabulary when I was 14.

Amanda Shires

Art Young You

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.

Amanda Shires

Mom Art Yin

Violin was my first form of expression - and is still in a lot of ways.

Amanda Shires

Ways Way Violin

And I also think it's a violin when you're selling it and a fiddle when you're buying it.

Amanda Shires

You Yin Violin

I come from a very musical family. My dad taught me to play guitar. I play violin and drums as well. Violin, I started in elementary school. Drums actually came when I was in a program called 'Rock Star,' which was really awesome. We were doing a song by the Ramones, so I thought, 'Why not play the drums?'

Amandla Stenberg

Music Men Family

I had studied violin from age 7 to 14.

Amar Bose

Age Violin T

Some parents let their kids sleep at other people's houses, where they drink alcohol, watch TV for hours and God knows what else. But if you say you have to get all A's and practice the violin for two hours, then they consider that abusive. That upsets me.

Amy Chua

God You Where

I first picked up a violin aged five - I just assumed everyone played.

Andre Rieu

Whoever heard of an electric violin, electric cello or, for that matter, an electric singer?

Andres Segovia

Since I first picked up the violin, I've been very interested in tone and texture: I would have very visceral reactions to the texture of a snare drum or a pedal steel guitar or a violin.

Andrew Bird

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.

Andrew Bird

Well, my main instrument is violin, but I think of myself as a songwriter who happens to play violin.

Andrew Bird

Usually bands with violins - it's this little, poorly amplified looking kind of futile on stage, and that's not the way that my music is put together.

Andrew Bird

Playing the violin and singing and whistling are just three different ways of making sound.

Andrew Bird

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

Andy Summers

Sometimes in films it's nice to have violins on either side, rather than on one side, so you've got more of a stereo picture with the violins. Sometimes it's good to have the basses in the middle.

Anne Dudley

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

Anne Rice

I think I've been lucky to work with so many lovely people. But there's Joshua Bell, who's the world's greatest violinist. We worked together live and once, for his record, but I really would want to work with him on one of my records.

Anoushka Shankar

I've been playing the viola since I was 6 years old, and then I decided to switch it up a bit, so I've been playing the violin since I was 11. I started playing the piano when I was 11, and I started playing the guitar when I was 10.

Anthony Gonzalez

I learned, too, how it was possible with the help of the picture and action to transform an apparently insignificant violin passage into an incident, and to lift a simple horn call into a thing of stupendous significance by means of scenic emphasis.

Anton Seidl

I had studied the violin to a certain amount of success. At some point, I realized that I didn't really like the violin. I was only doing it because I could, and I was good at it, and everyone was encouraging me. But I didn't have a great love for it.

B. D. Wong

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.

Barbara Sher

We are like violins. We can be used as doorstops, or we can make music.

Barbara Sher

I sometimes use a girl singer the way Henny Youngman uses his violin - as a bridge between one laugh and the next.

Benny Hill

I used to play violin, but I wasn't very good!

Birdy

To me, there is nothing better than me going into the studio with a live band and hearing those violins and that echo and that sound. I mean I loved it.

Bobby Vinton

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.

Brendon Urie

David Harrington, who's the violinist and founder of Kronos, is a super open-minded and adventurous guy.

Bryce Dessner

It was sort of an experiment to try to leave the violin. Can I be a real person without this thing? It was a big part of my identity.

Caroline Shaw

Public school teachers from every corner of America post classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org. Requests range from pencils for a poetry writing unit to violins for a school recital to microscope slides for a biology class.

Charles Best

The only downside to playing the violin is that you never know when you're going to be asked to play. I could be out to dinner or having a drink at a bar, and someone could just give me a violin, and I've got to be ready to play.

Charlie Siem

I was always jealous of my violinist friends and cellist friends who traveled with their instruments.

Christian McKay

My mom was sort of involved in amateur dramatics like Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, and played the violin. My dad played banjo and piano and sang as well, so there was all this music in my childhood.

Colm Wilkinson

I know a girl who cries when she practices violin because each note sounds so pure it just cuts into her, and then the melody comes pouring out her eyes. Now, to me, everything else just sounds like a lie.

Conor Oberst

You have those songs that are very special to you that you don't want to get ruined by production. Something like 'Start Again' shouldn't be touched. It's a classic-sounding song on a piano and violins and harmonies, and I think those songs are perfect as they are.

Conrad Sewell

I had different bands. I played with the Acoustic Warriors for the most part, without girl singers. It was the same kind of sound, acoustic guitar, bass, with violin and sometimes accordion, and the guys would sing, that kind of thing.

Dan Hicks

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.

Daniel Barenboim