Top 1145 Performer Quotes & Sayings - Page 18

When you're 17 years old, you have no idea who you are as a person, so there's no way you can be a good performer. You can't be a good comedian, because you don't know who you are, you don't know what you're saying. Stand-up is nothing but an expression of self-awareness. It wasn't until I was 23, 24 that I got to have a handle on a perspective on life, where I became decent. And I was just a terribly socially awkward younger person.

You know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he'll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.

The way that TV is set up is very helpful for when a show comes to an end because as an actor, you've got acting, but as a showrunner you still get to edit for three months and after that ends you get to do a sound mix. So, as a writer-performer in television, it's a very nurturing, gradual environment to say goodbye to a show.

I was in New York, miserable because I was working supper clubs but I wasn't expressing myself. I was really unhappy with my life. I saw Max Roach again and he told me I didn't have to do things like that. He made me an honest woman on the stage. I have been performing in that tradition since. I feel that I'm a serious performer now whereas then I wanted to be but I didn't know how.

I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it.

I don't really want to be known as just the puppet girl or just a singing ventriloquist. I want to be known as the performer, singer, ventriloquist, actress, Broadway star, all of it. I want do it all.

I'm the audience first, and if you're gonna be a great performer, you need to be a great audience. So, I do music for me first, and whoever likes it likes it, and whoever doesn't -- well, it's just not for them.

Because I'm the only performer who comes out and says I've had plastic surgery, I've become the plastic surgery poster girl, which is hilarious, because everybody has done it and they all deny it. They stand there, like the Bride of Frankenstein, they've all got stitches, and they all say, 'I've done nothing.' I talk about it.

I don't want it to be Sonya Deville, the gay wrestler. I want it to be Sonya Deville, the awesome performer who happens to be gay.

When I'm on stage, I feel like a performer for sure. I know people are looking at me and taking pictures. That part's wonderful. But, I live the most boring life away from what you see me on camera doing. The other 300 days out of the year I'm just the most normal person in the universe. I'm a wife. I'm a mother to my doggies. I'm a maid - I clean the house.

Madrid is enjoyed most from the ground, exploring your way through its narrow streets that always lead to some intriguing park, market, tapas bar or street performer. Each night we'd leave our hotel to begin a new adventure in Madrid and nine out of 10 times, we'd walk through the Plaza Mayor.

As a performer, you can't just sit around waiting for the phone to ring. You have to write and develop projects for yourself, because casting people aren't always going to see you the way you want to be seen. Write a one-person show, shoot a short film, do plays, whatever - activity breeds activity. No one's interested in a stay-at-home actress.

But on balance, a performer wants to feel that there's something there which stands out because you put a lot of effort into it, a lot of energy and a lot of yourself into something. I feel pretty successful about some movies I've been in that have not been greeted with a lot of enthusiasm and I do trust my own criteria.

Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

Martha Graham, along with George Balanchine, is one of the two commanding figures in 20th-century American dance. For those much younger than I am, her genius as a performer will have to be taken on faith - and on the always-suspect evidence of film. What will last, if things go well, is her genius as a choreographer, as a woman of the theater.

There's no gap between the writer and the performer, which is what I think makes [Monty] Python unique. Five or six people who write Python and five or six who act it. That's what makes it unique.

My natural state is a state of an explorer - a performer, but someone who wants to explore their experience and reflect on their experience more than just lie on the beach. Even when I go on vacations, I get stressed out if I'm at the beach for, like, two days. I'm like, 'Can't we do something? I can't just sit there.'

The crowd is a performer. En masse, a crowd has its own personality, its own character. And there are going to be nights when the crowd delivers a great performance. And there are going to be nights when the crowd bombs.

If you're looking for like, a pure base for your behavior on stage, maybe it's better to say, "Yeah, you're not obliged to pretend. But, you're also obliged to not pretend." So you have access to both sides, if you will. It's never a pure binary thing, but you can pretend. If you have total agency as a performer, then both are at your disposal.

When you're a performer, you have to please a large audience. And when you're in politics, you have to please a large audience, too.

My parents never pushed me towards music. I feel like, growing up in a musical household and always being surrounded by it, I was always kind of a performer child. I remember my parents would have guests over, and they would bring their kids, and I would make sure that we were ready to put a show on.

If you don't take no chances, then you're not a performer. Performers always take chances. You go see a singer, they'll hit the high note. They'll hit that note, they're not afraid, they're gonna exaggerate the fact and make me enjoy it, make me say, 'Wow, I wish I could do that!

We live in such hypersexualised yet totally prudish times. People have this expectation about everyone else's relationship to their own bodies.'Surely you must have shame about your body? Surely what's scariest for you as actor would be to stand in a room naked?' Believe me, I've been in so many more terrifying situations as a performer than that.

I started composing when I was around 13, and back then, people used to say that I needed to be a composer or a performer, but I can't be good at both of them. I could never understand why anyone would say that. Jellyroll did both, Bessie Smith did both, and so did I.

When I was a child, I dreamt of being a big star. I truly believed that I would be world famous someday, but that doesn't seem so important. What's important to me is getting to live my life as an artist, and making my passion my work. I have never wanted to be anything other than an actor and performer, and each day that I get to do that is a day well spent.

As a pianist, our particular role is to enter a piece and its logic and create a particular interpretation from our understanding. The most important thing for the performer is, after all, to create a special atmosphere - we enter the composer's feelings and emotions and recreate them freshly for a given audience.

Some bands blow it before they even play. The most important moment of any show is when a band walks out with the red amp lights glowing, the flashlight that shows each performer the way to his spot on the stage. It's crucial not to blow it. It sets the tempo of the show; it affects everyone's perception of the band.

Role-playing games have been a huge part of my life and a huge part of my training as a performer - learning social skills, meeting friends, and being a generally competent person - so I owe a lot to role-playing games.

I never thought of being a performer, never thought of being a singer, never thought of being a photographer. It's just the trajectory of my work. I go to the medium that serves the vision.

The jokes now, it's just more stories and personal experiences. And just talking about things that really happened. It's just becoming more comfortable as a performer, sharing my opinions on things, or things that've happened to me. That's where it's really going.

The things that drive me are poverty, and pain, and knowing that I don't want to end up being alone and I want to do something with my life and I want the name Dobson to remain in everyone's heads. Basically, just to rock and be the best performer I can be, and be true, and be real, and give people the real Fefe, nothing fake, all real.

I love festivals because they seem like more of an artsy, supportive attitude - which benefits a more theatrical performer sometimes with having theater and other non-club venues, as well as the audience being filled with other artists. It's nice to be with other comics, as usually at other road gigs, I'm solo for the most part.

In regards to live shows, space is very important to me. Space and context should complement the music in some way; you gain so much from it. It enhances the dialogue between audience and performer. I'm very much aware of this when choosing venues. I say no to 90% of booking offers. Somehow I feel the venue needs to make sense.

The crowd is the crowd. You're gonna take them as an individual performer how you take them. The key is how do you learn from them. How do you use whatever is happening reaction-wise to get better.

When you're casting a movie and when you're shooting a film, the eyes are the most important feature of any performer, really. Any great actor literally knows exactly how to use their eyes, and even as a filmmaker I love shooting huge close-ups because it's those eyes that mean so much to me.

Being an elite performer on the playing field of life is not about being perfect. Rather, it is about cultivating a mental focus towards mastery in every area of your life. It is about commiting yourself, from the core of your heart, to manifest and polish your highest talents and become the person you are destined to be.

There's that part of you as a performer that when you're told you're gonna be a fan favorite, you think 'Oh man, I better smile more and be kinder, let the people in more' I kinda had to fight all those instincts and just be like 'No, no no, you're gonna walk at the same pace, do everything with the same cadence, do everything the same.'

Sometimes people ask me, 'You do stand-up?' I try explaining what I do, and I don't think they really get it. So: 'Yeah, I do stand-up.' I wish there was one word to express what I do - that way, I don't sound arrogant. Whenever I say I'm a performer, people think I'm a performance artist: 'She paints herself white and pretends to be a flower.'

I'm particularly keen on promoting this [Nikolai] Medtner piece, Night Wind, because I feel it is a fantastic work that hasn't been given its due yet. Admittedly, it's difficult for both the performer and the listener. The work is quite dense, comparatively long, as these things go, and demands rather active listening. But it's gripping, and I believe it should be heard much more than it has been.

I was always a performer kid - like, annoyingly so. I would put on shows for my family and direct my friends in little plays, and my little sister, I'd make up dances with her. But when I was 12, that was when I started taking it seriously, and my mom for some reason believed in me and helped me find an agent in Cleveland, which did nothing for me.

I was 11 and living in Kosovo. I knew I wanted to perform but didn't feel like I could do it there. So I moved back to London on my own at 15, carried on going to school, and started posting cover songs online. I had no idea how I was going to become a performer, but I felt like I had so many more opportunities being in London.

I think it's important as a performer, no matter where I travel, if I run into someone at the airport or I'm having a conversation on an airplane, run into someone on the sidewalk, or you're waiting on a long line and you start talking to somebody, who doesn't really share a lot of your same views, but then you come to commonality, I think that's very very important as well.

I have worked really hard to reach where I am - I worked hard on my Hindi and diction because I am a Parsi and Hindi is not my strong point, and I've also learnt Tamil and Telugu because I want to get my lines right. I want to be known as a performer.

And, for any performer, to be able to go deep into character is fantastic. In film you only get to do that if you're the leading character. But in television you get 18 hours to really test the audience and take them to the edge of how far they will go with this character. I can step over this line and I love that.

It's weird, I love acting and stand-up is a very unique, solitary thing where you are the writer, performer and director. But acting is incredibly rewarding, working and interacting with people to create funny moments. I can't imagine not doing acting or stand-up, I really enjoy both of them that much.

I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing.

Donald Trump's a hell of a performer, he's a hell of an entertainer. If you put him on and let him say his crazy stuff, you're going to get a lot of viewers. If you take him off and have some sober discussion about what's going on in Syria, you're going to lose 80 percent of your audience.

Zumbao' is a word that is not commonly used in mainstream America or even mainstream Latino America. For me, I needed a word that describes me as a performer, as an artist and that is just me wilding out and being crazy. I'm Zumbao.

Once I reached my 40s, I thought to myself that if I'm going to play live now, I need to really mean this. I can't go out and be a little bit, for one moment slovenly in my choices as a performer. I mean, these people have paid a lot of money to be here, they've been through the nightmare of getting here, starving themselves waiting for us to get on stage, so I'm going to give them what they came here for.

Performance shots are a waste of time, they look like everyone else's. If you want to shoot a performer, then grab them, own them, you have to own people, then twist them into what you want to say about them.

It's a very hard line to walk, and I certainly am nowhere near having cracked how to do that, but I try to focus on being a brave performer and not worrying about my lighting or whatever, even though, then, sometimes I see myself on screen, and I'm like, "Why did you wear that, look like that, whatever," but I'm also more accepting that is what it is. There's this battle always.

I used to play for 200 people and now I'm selling out places that hold 16,000 people. It's a big change, and it's so cool to see people out there screaming the words to songs that I wrote. It just really reassures me that what I'm doing is working, and it really boosts my confidence, as far as on stage as a performer and a writer.

I think a lot of longevity, especially as a performer, depends on kind of what your commodity is. If your commodity is your cuteness and your chubby cheeks and your big gap between your teeth, if that's what your greatest asset is, of course that fails or that changes, you know, that goes away. Of course that fades.

I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well.

I feel like I am just an entertainer. It does not matter what form I take to perform and entertain. I think I deserve being called a performer because you don't call Tyler Perry a drag queen. You don't call Will Smith a drag queen and all the other mainstream artists who use the aesthetic of drag to entertain.

Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.

It would be wonderful to become what Oprah has become: she is in such a class of her own, as an entrepreneur, as a performer and an icon. The idea of building a series of programmes and choosing people that I think have talent to do them would be a very interesting idea. I would love to show that television can have soul, depth and range.

I'm a Gemini, so there's two people in me. Straight up. There's the nerd who is totally zoned out in the studio, EQ-ing this kick drum, raising this snare one decibel, or swapping this high hat out for another. Then there's the other side who's a performer. I have to go out on stage and be electric, a fire cracker, just run around the stage and give a show.

Go with your gut every single time. It’s never, ever wrong. Even if feels like everybody else is telling you that you need to do this or do that. Your gut is your artist and who you are as a person and what makes you special, and what makes you an interesting performer. Never try to be something you’re not.

I genuinely have never been in an audience where most people want that person to fail. I've never been in an audience like that, and I've never seen it as a performer. Only in my dreams, in which case they are always throwing tomatoes and going, "This is the most boring thing I've ever seen."