A Quote by Johnny Mathis

That's a big important deal, the way people see you from the stage. Once in a while, I'd ask people, 'How did you enjoy the show?' 'Hey, you looked great.' But how did I sound? That visual look is very important to people.
Self-censorship has become a part of me. I think because we live in a place where community is very important, family is very important, you feel the weight of how people look at you. Even though I might seem very modern and very liberated, I still have a lot of issues to deal with. I'm scared of how people look at me.
My dad was very, very invested in image. He felt that as a black person, the thing you could control was how did you look, how did you dress, how did you sound, how did you smell, how did you act. All of that stuff that you could control would absolutely have a strong impact on your access.
Stage is so important because it teaches me how to convey character with words - how to convey how a character reacts by the way they appear on stage. I can usually tell a playwright from someone who has never written for the stage. Did the character work? Did the dialogue reveal who the character is?
How you looked was not important. It was what you did and how you did it. Decide to do it and then do it the best way you can.
When I turned 50, I threw myself a big birthday party, and I looked seriously at what my life has been about. I recommend this to everybody. Ask yourself, "What have I done? How did I do it? Where'd I mess up? Where did I do well?" When I did this assessment of my life, I said to myself, "It was really good." I made a lot of people laugh, made a lot of people cry in a good way, brought a lot of joy to people, picked up a lot of garbage. And in all those years, I saw a lot. I went to foreign lands. I met interesting people. And I got it!
That's very important to me as well: presentation and how people perceive you, the visual of how things look, your posture. I learned that from [Bob] Fosse and Jerome Robbins, from all the great theater directors and the Busby Berkeleys. You overdeliver: visually, emotionally.
I never was a person that wanted that life...I'm a leader not a follower. I don't care what they say, or what they're doing or what they're wearing. Go ahead, cos come Judgement Day, all of that won't matter. How many people did you help. How many people did you talk to. How many people did you try to encourage. How many people did you bring to God. That's what's gon' matter.
At the end of the day, you realize that this is important stuff, but it isn't as important as how my kids feel about me. That's how I'm going to measure my success - not how I did as counsel to the president or as attorney general. How did I do as a dad?
Often people who already had an interest in human rights work. What I did notice with all of them, even the people who professed to be interested in human rights, was that activism was somewhat a concept in their mind - a symbolic flag on the quad or something to show how many people were starving in the world. But once they saw their efforts connected to a person, I did see a change.
How do I do that preparation [for film]? Just an immersion. I have a musician's, I guess, ear for the sound of the voice but it's also important to me, in the case of [playing] someone who is controversial, to get the outlines of the character right because how they present themselves to the world has a great deal to do with how people feel about them.
A lot of people ask, 'How did you start the business, and how did you do it money-wise?' And the truth is that I had three jobs. A day job, an evening job, and then designing my collection as well. That's just how we did it.
When you talk about war on poverty it doesn't mean very much; but if you can show to some degree this sort of thing then you can show a great deal more of how people are living and a very great percentage of our people today.
It's been a wild ride. I hope people can appreciate how special it is to see the people that ran well today; how special and sometimes fleeting greatness can be even from yourself. I gave it everything I had and for a short period of time I did very very well and I'm very proud of that and I'm leaving it at that. I did the best I could.
Museums are important. Design and art schools are important because they show how it should be done at the highest level of quality. Once people are exposed to quality, they recognize it right away and they appreciate it. People's tastes are changed by exposure to quality. Unless they can see it they can't want it. That's the brilliance of Apple - they provide quality in design.
How hard would it be to ask children what they see in their heads? How big should the house be in comparison to the family standing in front of it? What is it about the anatomy of the people that doesn't look right? Then let them try it again. Teach them to learn how to see and ask questions.
People spend a lot of time talking and thinking about how members of the opposite sex look, but very little time paying attention to how they sound. To our unconscious minds, however, voice is very important.
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