We, America, elected Trump. Putin didn't do it, nor the trolls in St. Petersburg with their zillions of busy bots. They may well have plucked certain strings in the national psyche - played us like a dimestore ukulele - but we were keen to be plucked.

Ben Fountain

When you're good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.

Adam Grant

On recovering my senses, I hastened to quit a place where I hoped there was nothing further to detain me. I first filled my pockets with gold, then fastened the strings of the purse round my neck, and concealed it in my bosom.

Adelbert von Chamisso

It is being implied that I have pulled strings to get my son out of jail on bail. Tell me if I was so powerful why would I have allowed my son to languish in Arthur Road jail for 21 days?

Aditya Pancholi

Everything that has a spare piano is 'like Satie' and everything with strings is 'filmic,' Sometimes I get annoyed when they say my stuff sounds 'like Satie'. No, it doesn't. At least, I don't think so.

Agnes Obel

The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical.

Al Jarreau

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

Aldous Huxley

I don't feel that comfortable being on the runway with a G-string. I shoot G-strings with Victoria's Secret, but on the runway... It's really about the moment. I work with professionals. Professional people make everything look perfect, they make everything that you're wearing look great, if it's in a picture or on the runway.

Alessandra Ambrosio

You know, for most of its life bluegrass has had this stigma of being all straw hats and hay bales and not necessarily the most sophisticated form of music. Yet you can't help responding to its honesty. It's music that finds its way deep into your soul because it's strings vibrating against wood and nothing else.

Alison Krauss

I grew up in a school that had a big music program, and it was incredible. It's what I looked forward to during the day. I had chorus, strings, band.

Alison Krauss

Living in Manhattan opened me to whole new sets of things to envy, study, gather and imagine stealing. A full-size 1809 German harp, beautifully painted with three goddesses, covered in a pea-green coat of great silvery refinement: mine for $180. Though all its strings were broken, its beauty let it claim a quarter of my one - bedroom.

Allan Gurganus

I just couldn't take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that's about all I did at school.

Alvin Lee

I loved living in Hollywood - and the weather there was just fantastic - but there is something about rural England, and especially Suffolk and Norfolk, that pulls at my heartstrings.

Amanda Donohoe

But the lover's power is the poet's power. He can make love from all the common strings with which this world is strung.

Amelia Barr

Watching David write was inspiring to me. He was at his most content composing. Music floated from his mind and fingertips. He would strum the 11 strings on his 12-string Harptone guitar and wander to the piano and play a few bars, then off to forage for rice pudding in the kitchen.

Angela Bowie

I have a special place in my heart for working moms - it's a constant pull on your heartstrings.

Angela Kinsey

Every guitarist I would cross paths with would tell me that I should have a flashy guitar, whatever the latest fashion model was, and I used to say, 'Why? Mine works, doesn't it? It's a piece of wood and six strings, and it works.'

Angus Young

There are a lot of recent pics of me rocking silk strings of beads. They're made by survivors of the sex trade in Cambodia who were rescued by one of the organizations I support.

AnnaLynne McCord

Strings have been a part of my career and my albums since the very first day. 'Snowbird' had beautiful strings.

Anne Murray

The sitar is a really difficult instrument to play. Physically it's taxing because of the cross-legged sitting position, the length of the neck on the shoulder, the thinness of the strings. There's a lot of pain, especially at the start.

Anoushka Shankar

Nero may have understood how to tune his cithern, but he disgraced his imperial office both by slackening and by tightening the strings.

Apollonius of Tyana