Top 35 Joshua Bell Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “You only live once, so I try to say yes to everything.”

— Joshua Bell

2. “When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you’re telling a story.”

— Joshua Bell

3. “I like trying things, I am kind of adventurous and I like thrill seeking.”

— Joshua Bell

4. “You don’t have to have lots of love affairs to know what love is.”

— Joshua Bell

5. “The best way to refine an interpretation is by getting out and performing.”

— Joshua Bell

6. “What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I’m continuing to do.”

— Joshua Bell

7. “I love the outdoor festival feeling.”

— Joshua Bell

8. “Music plays a huge role in the movie. The music in Star Wars, I can’t imagine what the movie would have been like without it. It made the film.”

— Joshua Bell

9. “I hope I will always have the chance to play the violin.”

— Joshua Bell

10. “I don’t listen to a lot of music when I have my free time. But I’ll go to a jazz club and have a drink and listen to a good jazz musician. Or sometimes in the morning, if I want to put myself in a good mood, I’ll put on some Latin music.”

— Joshua Bell

11. “At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off.”

— Joshua Bell

12. “Although I hardly ever turn on the TV set unless it’s football season, I do watch a lot of TV on my iPad – perfect for long airplane journeys.”

— Joshua Bell

13. “I want to do everything. That’s my problem.”

— Joshua Bell

14. “Actors want to do Shakespeare again and again, or want to do Hamlet. When you hear one guy do Hamlet and another guy do it, it’s going to be a whole different experience.”

— Joshua Bell

15. “I open up my violin case every day, and have one of the great creations. It is very inspiring. It makes you want to practice. How can you open up a case and look at a violin that was made in 1713 by one of the greatest artists in history and then say, “No, I don’t feel like practicing today.””

— Joshua Bell

16. “Every orchestra is different. Sometimes, you’re blown away by a particular musician. If I’m playing the Brahms concerto, it’s crucial to have a great oboe player, because we work in tandem.”

— Joshua Bell

17. “There are some days I take my violin out and it feels dreadful, like nothing is responding, and I want to sell it and get rid of it. And the next day suddenly the skies open up and the sound is glorious again. So it’s like a relationship: There are good days and bad days.”

— Joshua Bell

18. “There are days that I get neurotic with the violin. Every little adjustment will change the balance for good or for bad. It’s kind of a miracle, the way the whole thing works as an acoustical whole, so perfectly balanced.”

— Joshua Bell

19. “We live in the least ugly time in history. If you look at back when Beethoven was writing, half the kids were dying, mothers were dying at childbirth, there were more wars going on then than there are now. People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times.”

— Joshua Bell

20. “I don’t sleep with a violin in my bed, but there is something very magical about the instrument. You open up the case; it’s a masterpiece, it’s gorgeous, the varnish is still there from 300 years ago. People who know violins, they look at it and it’s almost like a face.”

— Joshua Bell

21. “I grew up in a musical family, but nobody was a professional musician.”

— Joshua Bell

22. “No one tells you what to do if you completely flop at the beginning of a performance.”

— Joshua Bell

23. “I don’t want to portray myself as a daredevil. I’m not at all.”

— Joshua Bell

24. “I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don’t get that kind of exposure.”

— Joshua Bell

25. “When you play for ticket-holders, you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I’m already accepted.”

— Joshua Bell

26. “So much of performing is a mind game.”

— Joshua Bell

27. “There are some great teachers who have had great students, but they themselves can’t play a note. I don’t understand it, because the most I learned from my teacher was just hearing him play.”

— Joshua Bell

28. “If you mess up the tiniest little thing in the Beethoven concerto, or the phrasing isn’t just exactly perfectly executed, Beethoven brings out the worst in the best violinist. You almost never hear a satisfying performance, because it doesn’t play itself.”

— Joshua Bell

29. “I like working with kids because I enjoy seeing the looks on their faces and, it’s kind of selfish, I want a future audience.”

— Joshua Bell

30. “Kids need to be structured in some way, but you don’t want to force something down their throats that they have no interest in. You have to find the right balance.”

— Joshua Bell

31. “Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of musical friends.”

— Joshua Bell

32. “We live in the least ugly time in history.”

— Joshua Bell

33. “I write arrangements. Im sort of a wannabe composer.”

— Joshua Bell

34. “Conducting is a strange thing to teach.”

— Joshua Bell

35. “I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity.”

— Joshua Bell