Love Quote by Richard Price

Price’s line is a small masterclass in how artists confess desire without letting it get sentimental. The opening is all appetite: not “I admire saxophonists,” but “I’d love to be one,” the kind of wanting that’s bodily, immediate, a little adolescent. Then he pivots to the private ritual that makes the want livable: he “pretend[s]” he’s the saxophonist while listening. That’s not a cute anecdote; it’s an admission that fandom is often a form of temporary identity theft, a low-stakes way to borrow someone else’s mastery and swagger for three minutes at a time. The sax matters, too: an instrument culturally coded as both cool and exposed. A sax solo is breath turned into attitude. To imagine yourself there is to imagine yourself articulate in a way ordinary speech can’t manage.

The punchline lands because it’s blunt and oddly tender: “about as much chance…as…learning how to fly.” Price chooses an impossibility with a childish clarity, which is exactly the point. The fantasy isn’t delusion; it’s a controlled hallucination, a way to keep longing in play without turning it into a midlife crisis purchase and a stack of lesson books.

Contextually, it fits a writer who’s built a career eavesdropping on ambition, self-mythmaking, and the gap between who people are and who they rehearse being. He’s not mocking the dream; he’s marking the distance. The honesty is the flex: he knows the line between participating in art and pretending you can become it, and he defends the pretend as its own kind of truth.