Top 310 Backstage Quotes & Sayings - Page 6

When most people looked at Josie Tyrell, they only saw a certain collection of bones, a selection of forms filling space. But Michael saw past the mouth and the eyes, the architecture of the body, her fleshly masquerade. Other boys were happy enough to enjoy the show, they just wanted to be entertained in the body's shadow theater. But Michael had to come backstage. He went down into the mines, into the dark, and brought up the gold, your new self, a better self. But what good was it if he was just going to leave her behind?

I was 16 at the time, and I came backstage and started hanging out with them. I said, "Well, maybe you can 'vanish' the silk this way." The opening was a black stage while the "Magic to Do" song started playing. All you saw were hands, lit by Jules Fisher, and then Ben Vereen would appear beyond the hands, and at the end of the scene he would vanish a silk. The spotlight would hit a red spot on the floor where you'd see the silk on the floor. He'd pull the silk out of the floor and it became the entire set coming out of the floor.

I wasn't trying to write a corrective novel - that would just end up tasting like medicine, and I tried to stay away from polemics as best I could. I think that, if anything, Fobbit is my way of showing readers there's another side to war - the backstage of combat, if you will. If you play a word association game with Americans and say "war," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Soldiers running across a battlefield through a hail of bullets, right? Rambo, smoke, explosions. In Fobbit, I hope readers will see something a little different

The greatest feeling you can get in a gym or the most satisfying feeling you can get in the gym is the pump. It feels fantastic. It's as satisfying to me as cumming is, you know, as in having sex with a woman and cumming. So can you believe how much I am in heaven? I am like getting the feeling of cumming in the gym; I'm getting the feeling of cumming at home; I'm getting the feeling of cumming backstage; when I pump up, when I pose out in front of 5000 people I get the same feeling, so I am cumming day and night. It's terrific, right? So you know, I am in heaven.

I've always loved film more than theater, and film may be more closely related to making a record because you have that ability to go in and do your work and have no judgment around it, and feel honest. Then, much later, it's presented to people. But in theater, people come backstage after a performance and you're about to do the same play again the next night, and people say, "Well, I didn't really believe that emotion" or whatever. It's really hard for me, I like to be closed up and just do the work.

I read a story about some old opera singer once, and when a guy asked her to marry him, she took him backstage after she had sung a real triumph, with all the people calling for her, asked, 'Do you think you could give me that?' That story hit me right, man. I know no guy ever made me feel as good as an audience. I'm really far into this now, really committed. Like, I don't think I'd go off the road for long now, for life with a guy no matter how good. Yeah, it's the truth. Scary thing to say though, isn't it?

My stepfather used to be a clown in The Shrine Circus. He took me backstage when I was 23. I saw three elephants chained to the cement floor in the warehouse of the Michigan State Fairgrounds. Sadness, hopelessness and fear were emanating from their eyes, from their bodies. They were swaying neurotically from side to side. A monkey was screaming in his cage, grabbing the bars of his prison. Two tigers were pacing feverishly in their tiny cages. Cruelty was staring me in the face. I knew something was wrong. If you pay attention to energy, you can tell when a fellow being is in peril.

The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.

Because of an off-hand funny comment I made backstage at a concert years ago, a story circulated that the song has been a burden and even that I didn?t sing it for a while. That?s completely false. I am very proud of ?American Pie? and the many satellites that grow from it and revolve around it. For many years I carried my songs around and now they carry me around. I have always sung ?American Pie? for my audience and would never think of disappointing them since it is they who have given me a wonderful life and untold affection for almost 30 years.

I suddenly thought about being backstage, and I think it shocks you to meet the people you shared your bedrooms with. And a lot of them either take themselves too seriously or don't know how to take themselves at all. But I wanted to be aware in a very sarcastic way that every song I've written has probably been written about 12-16 times before. And doing that makes it very hard for me to accept serious singer-songwriters in the world, the up-and-comers, the ones who are out there who let that define their every move, who live and die and breathe for it. It's a bit of a tragedy, I think.