A Quote by Rob Riggle

I love improv so much. Listening. I think that's the key. When you improvise, you put a lot of pressure on yourself to create, and to be generating information, and trying to be funny, but if you just listen to what's being said to you, and then react honestly, you generally get better results.

Rob Riggle

Quote Topics

Being Better Create Funny Generally Generating Get Get Better Honestly Improv Improvise Information Just Just Listen Key Listen Listening Lot Love Much Pressure Put React Results Said Then Think Trying Yourself

Quote Author

Rob Riggle
American - Actor
Born: April 21, 1970

Improv is more than just spitting out a bunch of funny stuff that's unrelated to the material. You have to stay in character, you have to react and respond as the character you're trying to play. You have to service the story, and I think improv training has helped with my listening, responding, and my audition technique. It's sounds so silly, but it's true. Because not only do you improvise during the audition, but once you get the part, they'll say, "Throw away everything. Just improv this scene. Do whatever you want." Someone could panic if they're not used to doing something like that.

Wendi McLendon-Covey

I'm convinced to do improv. All you have to do is listen to what people are saying to you, and then just add more information to what they've just said. That's all there is to improv, but it's the hardest thing to do.

Ryan Stiles

I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop.

Lupe Fiasco

I think I always disappoint people, because they always expect someone very pretty. Very done. There’s so much pressure to be thin, blonde and busty. I’m skinny, but even I couldn’t fit into some of the clothes in L.A! In a funny kind of way, I think you create it yourself. I think it’s much better to go with the flow and embrace your body, whatever shape it is, and just be happy.

Keira Knightley

Become better listeners. Practice the art of listening in everything you do. Not just listening to yourself and your body, but listening to the people around you, listening to the plant world, the animal world. Really open your ears to what's coming at you. From there, see if you can have the ability to respond instead of react. And that usually comes with listening. If the observation and the listening are deep, then your action will be deep also.

Rodney Yee

With improv, it's a combination of listening and not trying to be funny.

Kristen Wiig

I think that so much of the creative process is a fragmentary one, and then it's about just allowing your intuition to put it together for you. It's funny how you create something and you think you're going in a million different directions, and then the thing you end up with is the thing that you wanted to create your whole life, but you're just as surprised by it as anybody else.

Jeff Mangum

Sure, I'm competitive and I want to do well and I've put pressure on myself - I think anybody who is competitive and wants to try to get better is going to be that way. We're just trying to improve and get better.

Chase Elliott

If you feel like you're doing terrible in a scene, that usually means that you're not listening because you're too preoccupied with yourself... you're not listening to your scene partner. If you listen, you're naturally going to get that response that the camera's going to pick up because you just react.

Julia Garner

I remember Chris Cooper saying to me - I was doing October Sky with him - and he said, "You know, you're just yelling at me." He's like, "You're just yelling. You need to listen." We were in a fight, and you know, oh you'd get so excited as an actor, you're like, "We have a fight, oh, I get to get mad." And he just said, "You need to listen." And I started listening - and then all of a sudden where I was listening was where, I don't know, anger became something else.

Jake Gyllenhaal

Ladies like improv stilts, and I think men like improv giant cocks. But one of the great things about improv is that you get to play some roles you'd never get to play otherwise, you know, like the old Italian pizza-maker who's passing on the business down to his son. You get to play it all when you improvise.

Amy Poehler

It's all false pressure; you put the heat on yourself, you get it from the networks and record companies and movie studios. You put more pressure on yourself to make everything that much harder.

John Belushi

There's different kinds of improv. There's Second City improv where you try to slowly build a nice sketch. There's stuff you do in college coffee houses where you just go joke, joke, joke. Bring another funny character with a funny hat on his head. Christopher Guest is more the line of trying to get a story out.

Fred Willard

We've all seen comedians look like they're reaching just a little bit too much for the laugh. This is counterproductive. The conceit of standup is that it is effortless, which makes the prospect of generating new comedy a tricky one: you are trying to be funny without looking like you are trying to be funny.

Romesh Ranganathan

In a tiebreaker, you generally have a lot of adrenaline running through. It's all about just holding your serve, trying to hold two serves at a time, trying to stay ahead in the tiebreaker, constantly put pressure on my opponent.