Top 204 Improvising Quotes & Sayings

If you're too hung up on improvising 'correctly', you will almost always fail.

Ah, you coward! Look at you, running." "Actually, it's called improvising.

When you're improvising, you're relying on this connection to creativity.

Symphony musicians are not trained in improvising, certainly not in a jazz style.

Improvising with Mark McKinney, my childhood guru, is a dream.

Sometimes you have to kind of keep proving that you're improvising. That's the game, or the goal, of long-form TV improv, is that you have to kind of keep reminding and showing people that you're improvising, because they won't believe you really.

There are very few actors who are truly good at improvising; that's a real skill.

I do a lot of improvising on movies, actually.

I love food and am very good at improvising when preparing it - it's a really creative experience for me.

There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

A person improvising is sometimes very fortunate that just at that second things coincide.

Improvising political dialogue is not easy.

There are certain actors who are very good at improvising, like Dustin Hoffman and Glenda Jackson.

If you do improvising, it can sometimes end up being a waste of time. And if you do that, it's more or less based on a writing process.

When I'm at the piano, and I'm improvising some song about something, it usually oscillates between factual, absurd, and sincere.

I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.

On 'Sunny,' the main actors are adults, and we're all friends, and we all have the same sense of humor, so there's a lot of improvising.

I think that if you're improvising on TV, it's a great way to help the dialogue between actors and writers.

Every day, you have to make three hours of music, just randomly improvising, and that's a great way to weed stuff out.

I'm used to sort of improvising a lot when I do my comedies.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

You have to be loose enough so that when you listen to what's coming, you can follow it. In that sense I am improvising, but I don't think I'm experimenting. I have a problem with the whole term "experimental music."

I've never been good at improvising.

The amazing thing about the cistern is that, if you're improvising in a dead room, you play your note and then you're left with your thoughts and you have to be really quick on your feet and be able to move through many different musical thoughts seamlessly. Improvising there is just, like, you play a note and then you had at least ten seconds to think, "What would be the perfect accompanying note to that?" And then you could add that note. You can just build this puzzle that was really amazing.

I'll probably never stop improvising.

Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.

Boxing is a lot of preparation and then improvising, so there are parallels to being an actor.

I enjoy songwriting. It's slow-motion improvising.

We're improvising a lot of this, which amazes people.

I write and rewrite and memorize, and then inject my performance with improvising and spontaneity, because if something feels too rehearsed, it's not going to be fun.

Improvising things is always changing. A lot of momentum.

Yeah, improvising only really works 100% when you're with somebody.

My favorite dish is cleaning out the fridge on Sunday night and improvising a great medley.

That's what improvising is like for me. There's no tollbooth between my impulse and my action.

When you're improvising, you connect with people in a way you don't in normal life, strangely.

I don't think there's an improvised word in the movie. I hope not because I admire writing. Improvising is kind of gambling. It's just that you're standing up.

If you have a child, you're improvising with rules all day long, and some of them are total lies.

I've always loved improvising. That's how I write songs. Creativity has an improvised element to it.

Yes, for me audio-visual performance has its roots in my experience working as an improvising musician and composer.

No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing.

I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life.

Working with Dominic Savage was an amazing experience. You don't have a full script to follow so you're more or less improvising and he tells you what he wants out of the scene.

When I joined the band I was coming largely from an improvising background, and the idea of a fluid rhythm that was really coherent attracted me.

All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that's all people know how to do when they're improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.

A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.

I love improvising.

Normally when I'm writing, in the beginning I don't think of lyrics at all. I'm just improvising.

I had such a broad array of classes, in improvising, in clowning, in Shakespeare. It was so great to just be inundated with all that.

Growing up playing jazz and improvising has had a big impact on me, and it translates into my music.

I love improvising on the spot. I like that pressure.

I don't think you can separate a person's "style" and his persona. If you're writing or improvising honestly, you will inevitably reflect who you are.

I prefer improvising, rather than creating comedy out of thin air.

There's something very edgy about Bill Murray out there improvising.

If you're improvising with Paul Reiser, man, you'd better hold on tight!

When you're improvising, it's fun to find something that you can lean on that is similar to your life experience. In my opinion, that's very helpful.

A puppet that starts to improvise badly is almost funnier than the puppet that's improvising well. So the show gets better when the improvising is really good, but also the show can also sometimes get better when the improvising sort of goes a little wrong and that's sort of a blessing to improvising with puppets.

I think the other thing that's important is getting to a place, which very, very rarely happens with improvising groups, where somebody can decide not to play for a while. You watch any group of musicians improvising together and they nearly all play nearly all the time. In fact I often say that the biggest difference between classical music and everything else is that classical musicians sometimes shut up because they're told to, because the score tells them to. Whereas any music that's sort of based on folk or jazz, everybody plays all the time.

A lot of lines in movies were written, but I'm always improvising. Once you get into the scene, it just comes to me.

The idea of just improvising and riffing can sometimes be at the expense of story.

When I feel like improvising, I always improvise on the guitar, never on the lute. It's as natural to me as breathing.