“If life was meant to be a straight line, God would have made the world flat.” Andy Winter

Hi, I’m Andy Winter and welcome to my site.

So who is Andy Winter?

When I was two years old, my family escaped from Hungary to Austria, eventually landing in Haifa, Israel as part of the first Jewish Exodus to Israel. While my father was the first mayor of the Hungarian community in Israel, he wanted a better life for his family and moved us to Canada when I was six. The first major purchase was a piano for my brother Gabe who was a piano prodigy at 12 years of age. When Gabe wasn’t at the piano, I was…playing songs by ear and composing. I never stopped…

My other passion is poetry. My grade three teacher recognized my talent and soon my poetry was part of the school’s curriculum. I was named my high school’s Poet Laureate. And I was honoured to have my poem “A Moment Ago and Then” (written about the death of President John F. Kennedy) receive national recognition and be accepted into Accessions by the Kennedy Library. I never stopped writing poetry; many of my poems became lyrics for melodies that I wrote.

I’ve always loved language and the sayings people come up with. I decided it was necessary to capture those sayings by the people who said them. Today celebrities are attributed with saying many things that they didn’t even say – they get attributed simply because of their celebrity status. I thought that it would be a good idea to celebrate everyone who comes up with an interesting or clever saying, or as I like to call it, famous sayings of the yet-to-be-famous, or not-so-famous…I hope you enjoy the sayings/quotes and that you’ll participate with a few of your own.

At age 21, I married the love of my life Ildi. Today our family has grown with children,  grandchildren and great grandchildren. Writing melodies…yes, song writing is in my blood but I spent less time on it while raising our family and having a successful food service business.

Bernie Solomon, lawyer for  both David Clayton Thomas (of Blood Sweat and Tears) and Dan Hill (singer and songwriter), introduced me to Ben McPeek, a talented and recognized Canadian songwriter and owner of Captain Audio Studios. Using Ben’s arrangements backed with the Laurie Bower singers, I recorded my first songs “Summer Love” and “A Love Forever”. I then worked with Paul Booth from the Tommy Hunter show and released “I Can Hear The Music” and “I Never Really Knew”. Since then I’ve released “I’ll Be There“, a song for my daughter. My newest compositions are “Can’t Believe You’re Happening To Me“, “I See Myself In You”, “Saving Time” and an anthem I wrote for the City of Toronto – “Toronto, You are my Destiny“, arranged by Shelly Berger and recorded by musicians from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

I invite you to listen to my music, enjoy my book of poetry in my ebook ‘The Words I Write‘… and accept my invitation to submit a saying to the site.