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Performances Quotes

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Performances Quotes

“I found so much fun in the light shows and the multimedia shows of the hippies. That was when I was a student in the 1960s, and I was in New York, so I learned how to deal with writing, recording sound of other people, performance art - because that was a new territory, and I liked everything that was new and provocative. That interested me more than becoming anything specific.”

“Every performance is different. There are so many factors involved... the people I've met that day, the weather, the city I'm in, conversations, sleep, mood, everything. However, there are many nights when the stars align and I feel like both the story teller and the stranger in the crowd, hearing it all for the very first time.”

“There's so many variables in comedy. Comedy is not this thing that's a performance like a play. It's really an interaction with every single person in the room. And if there's a weirdness in the room for any people, be it something the comedians did at the top of the set or be it the mixture of the people isn't right, something can go awry. So it's really great to see you proven wrong about someone.”

“Even as a fan, as someone who's into his performances, the Stooges and his own stuff, Iggy [Pop] is one of the people who kept underlining something that a lot of my older musician friends with punk roots say: you get into this space in your life where you feel like a weirdo, you're marginalised, you don't fit in... and then you can get up on stage in front of people who probably hate you.”

“People who are great thinkers, in science or in art, people who are great performers, have to have that kind of capacity. Without that kind of capacity, it's extremely difficult to manage a high level of performance because you're going to get a lot of extraneous material chipping away at the finery of your thinking or the finery of your motor execution.”

“I learned from the Macarturos. I had never been at a table with a labor organizer and a playwright and a performance artist and an anthropologist and a human rights lawyer. Usually at most gatherings, it's all writers. But suddenly I was at a table with all these different people and I learned from each of them, learned from the work they're doing, learned new ways to solve my problems.”

“I'm moved by us, our quirks and mistakes. I find inspiration in everything from a piece of art to the hem of a dress. I'm one of those people who sees Frank Zappa in a cup of coffee, or elephants wrestling in clouds. But also, conscious creation of all kinds moves me. And a divinely expressed performance in any genre sets me completely on fire.”

“I wrote [Valley of Violence] entirely with James Ransone in mind. I get such a joy out of watching his performance and seeing people watch this. He's so great. The bravado thing and the foolishness, he does them both so well. It's weird because he's so hateable in the movie, but in the end, you're also going, "I feel bad for him." That's hard to do. It's hard to do that to where you're like, "This guy's the worst, but I know why he's the worst, so it's a shame this is happening." That's the whole thing.”

“You know, you're doing the same show every day, and your inspiration, you have to look no further than the fact that you know people travel across the country to see you. In a lot of cases, this is that audience's only chance to see the thing, and so, that's what gets you up in the morning, and that's what gets you giving your best performance on stage, is the awareness that this audience is ready for it, and here to have an experience, and so in turn are you.”

“Some people seem to have extreme natural wiring - a talent that seems to come out of nowhere. Like a music savant or prodigy. The uplifting news, though, is that many talented people don't have such natural wiring - but they forge a talent through thousands of hours of what's known as deliberate practice or deliberate performance.”

“When I have a writing workshop, I like to have people that are anthropologists and people who are poking around in other fields, I like to have them all in the same workshop, and not worry about genre. I like to mix it up, because the kind of comments you can get from a fiction writer about your poetry are going to be very different than what you'll get from a poet. Or the comments you'll get from a filmmaker about your performance are going to be very different. My writing workshop is about mixing it up, cross-pollinating, not only in genres but in occupations.”

“Sometimes you write passages that don't need to be rewritten. Performance is that for me. Improvisation, things that happen in the moment, are sometimes wonderful, or wonderful as a moment to be shared between performer and people, but that's it. There might be a strong bond between you and the people, a transformative night, but as a live record it might not translate.”

“Brasil used to have - and still has, in some ways - a strong culture of showing off. And that's not only in sneakers and streetwear. People like to show how much their sneakers cost, usually by rocking performance models with visible technology, like Nike Shox, adidas Springblade and ASICS Noosa. It's like a status symbol for someone that wants to show to the world they "succeeded in life," no matter how rich they actually are.”

“When someone says to me, do you do stand-up I say absolutely not. I like to think of it as a theatrical performance. With me the show changes maybe five to ten percent every night. Of course, whatever I see in front of me and sometimes I get on a little run about it and it changes the show. And my delivery is such that people who have seen me many times say Gee, I never heard that before. Actually, they have, but I might have changed it around.”

“People ask, 'Why would you cast yourself in your movie?' And, for me, it's more like an achievement that I am now not playing all the parts, you know? Like I was for so long, in all my performances and a lot of my short movies. So, that's where I'm coming from, not out of a kind of actress-y sense of myself. I mean, I don't really see myself as an actress, but more from performance: this is how you make something. You do it yourself. You're in it and you write it. I think I keep doing it that way, 'cause it's my way. It's what makes me feel like I know how to do it.”

“What you have to remember, when you get to the level of seeing 10,000 people a night, is that they've all paid to have a performance. I need to make sure that they get their money's worth. I don't want to be going on stage and saying, "I'm just going to try some stuff and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter," because it does matter.”

“Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we've had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you're really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.”