Size Violin

Famous quotes containing the words size and/or violin:

    Delusions that shrink to the size of a woman’s glove,
    Then sicken inclusively outwards:
    . . . the incessant recital
    Intoned by reality, larded with technical terms,
    Each one double-yolked with meaning and meaning’s rebuttal:
    For the skirl of that bulletin unpicks the world like a knot....
    Philip Larkin (1922–1986)

    The mastery of one’s phonemes may be compared to the violinist’s mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor’s renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.
    W.V. Quine (b. 1908)