Cigar Box Banjo Quotes

“To claim that music is more important than oxygen would be trite and sentimental. It would also be true.”
― Roddy Doyle, Cigar Box Banjo: Notes on Music and Life

“I live on an island called Ireland where most of the music is shite. I grew up listening to "Danny Boy"; I grew up hating Danny Boy, and all his siblings and his granny. "The pipes, the pipes are caw-haw-hawing." Anything with pipes or fiddles or even - forgive me, Paul - banjos, I detested. Songs of loss, of love, of going across the sea; songs of defiance and rebellion - I vomited on all of them.”
― Roddy Doyle, Cigar Box Banjo: Notes on Music and Life

“I cried, a bit, as a spoke to Belinda on my mobile phone, in a quiet corner, perhaps the only quiet corner in Jaipur. I told her how I'd hoped Paul would read the forward, that he'd read how much I admired his work and how much I admired him, how much I just plain liked him and loved him. But, even as I spoke, I knew: Paul had always known that. He'd seen in on my face every time we met. What made me cry was the obvious, stupid fact that we'd never meet again.”
― Roddy Doyle, Cigar Box Banjo: Notes on Music and Life