Performers Quotes

The top players in every field think differently when all the marbles are on the line. Great performers focus on what they are doing, and nothing else...They let it happen, let it go. They couldn't care less about the results.

As a performer, I don't like to play the same thing over and over. I like to play it and let it go and move on. That's also why television hasn't really been something that I've done.

Music is probably the only place I get energy from. Music and maybe watching a really tremendous performer, watching a terrific performer like Jagger or watching a great movie.

I believe a lot in the relationship between performers. When you're supported by someone's eyes, you're not alone.

Not everyone can be as successful a performer as myself, who gave 10 great performances the first time I ever did comedy, and then toiled in obscurity for years.

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.

It's an immensely competitive business, and I can tell you the older you get, the parts are fewer, and the people who are proven performers are greater.

Exceptional performers are masterful opportunists, keenly alert to opportunity!

The true exceptional performer is on super pilot. Every single sense, every fiber of his body is brought together in what he is doing.

If you look at the world-class performers at the top of the game, their numbers are just exceptional and that is the level he is at.

Miss Dietrich is not so much a performer as a one-woman environment.

As a performer you are being used to keep people watching so the commercial endorsements that support the network can be seen by as many people as possible.

The encore is the short piece after the program has finished, where the performer brings out something that the audience doesn't expect.

When I went on to write my next book, Working With Emotional Intelligence, I wanted to make a business case that the best performers were those people strong in these skills.

The irony is that I use computers every day of my life to do music because I edit all of my music in a computer. But when it comes to doing live processing, I prefer, as a performer with an instrument, not just having the computer as the only thing I have. I really prefer and find it much more flexible to have the limitations of pedals.

There are those superstars who refuse to give anything of themselves to the public except what they see on-screen. In movies and on records, it's easy to insulate one's self from the public; that's why I think I wouldn't care to be a television performer, particularly in the States, where TV stardom is so intimate.

What Mr. Kaufman and his team are after is less a portrait of any one person than one of the ethos of a place. In the deliberate, simple staging ... in which eight radiantly clean-scrubbed performers embody 60 different people against a bare-bones set, 'Laramie' often brings to mind 'Our Town,' the beloved Thornton Wilder study of life, love and death in parochial New Hampshire.

I initially told people I wanted to be a dancer and ultimately a "Rockette." I didn't really know what a musical theatre performer was other than the Shirley Temple type.

If you just work on your upper body, you're not going to be a full-range dancer or performer. You've got to work in all directions as much as you possibly can.

I was like, wow, this guy's [Donald Trump ] going to do well. And I remember people laughed at me. People were like, oh, you silly ignorant person who's just come to this world. You clearly shouldn't be at "The Daily Show" 'cause you don't know what you're talking about. And I was like, but I don't know. He seems like he connects with people. I can relate to him as a performer. I can see what tools he's using. He's good at riffing. He's good at taking the crowd on a journey. I can see what he's doing.

To be a top performer you have to be passionately committed to what you're doing and insanely confident about your ability to pull it off.

The objective.. is to achieve a comfort level between the cook/artist/performer and the customer/viewer/diner. And if we can achieve that, and the customers are happy and the cooks are happy, then we have a great experience.

Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art.

I want TNA to grow as a company, it’s better for me as a performer and me as a businessman. But how can they grow if every chance they get they are constantly talking about up north and the WWE?

I don't consider myself a stand-up comedian. I consider myself a performer; a comic as opposed to stand-up comedian. Stand-up comedians stand there and do their bits; I break every rule in creation. If there's a rule that can be broken in stand-up, I'll do it.

While I don't script and I don't use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.

I miss my hair, but I feel like going out there with some fake braids wouldn't be right. I want to be the most genuine performer I can be.

Classical pianist Awadagin Pratt. I first heard this eccentric and introverted performer when I was living in the Midwest. He was playing Brahms ballades - haunting.

I don't know what the hell I'm doing up there half the time. These performers that go on about their technique and craft - oh, puleeze! How boring! I don't know what technique means. But I do know what experience is. I know in my gut when I've done a scene right.

I knew I wanted to be a performer and do comedy at 5 years old. My dad's wife, Marlene Rosenbaum, was boiling water and she goes, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I said, "A comedian." And she laughed and laughed because she thought that was the cutest, funniest thing.

It's a very different show because of the elements that we're putting in. There's so many different styles of comedy, but Mr. Show was unique to Bob and David - two of the most brilliant performers and writers there are. Their show was based on them. Our show is a bit more broad. We have a cast of 7, we have guests. We can be slightly more topical.

Some performers are brilliant comedians, some are genius musicians, and some just make you happy to be alive. THE BOBS are all of that - and then some.

If you want to be a singer or a performer or absolutely anything in the world that you want to do, I think you should never give up, you should never let anyone put you down and tell you you can't do it, because if you believe in yourself you will go far

Most performers don't admit this, because it sounds negative and performers are not supposed to be negative, but when I was on the road, I was lonely.

To be a qawwal is more than being a performer, more than being an artist. One must be willing to release one's mind and soul from one's body to achieve ecstasy through music. Qawwali is enlightenment itself.

Paul McCartney is a genius ... Paul married Rock & Roll to beauty, and forever raised the bar for composers, musicians, and fans ... an incredible solo performer ... the creator of our favorite songs.

A price drop in a good stock is only a tragedy if you sell at that price and never buy more. To me, a price drop is an opportunity to load up on bargains from among your worst performers and your laggards that show promise. If you can't convince yourself "When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a buyer" and banish forever the fatal thought "When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a seller," then you'll never make a decent profit in stocks.

You can't ask a guy like me why [I performed]. I really wanted to fly through the air. I was a daredevil, a performer. I loved the thrill, the money, the whole macho thing. All those things made me Evel Knievel. Sure, I was scared. You gotta be an ass not to be scared. But I beat the hell out of death.

Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.

I feel that as a writer and as a performer too. I never really thought about backstory for characters. It was much more of a musical approach: You learn a melody, and then you sing it, I suppose, or you find a rhythm or a cadence that works for the material. And then it's sort of about hitting that note correctly and finding those beats.

But then, so far as I know, I am the only performer who ever pledged his assistants to secrecy, honor and allegiance under a notarial oath.

All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

I run Willow Management, which is the biggest agency for other short actors. We look after performers who are either under five feet and over seven feet tall.

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.

As an actress, I think it’s important to look back and realize that we aren’t always quite as original as we think we are. There’s this grand, textured history for us over the last 100 years of incredible writers, directors, and performers.

Here's what I advise any young struggling actress today: The important thing is to develop as a woman first, and a performer second. You wouldn't prostitute yourself to get a part, not if you're in the right mind. You won't be happy, whatever you do, unless you're comfortable with your own conscience.

At the age of 15 I began my singing lessons, and once I became a professional performer, I dove into acting.

What is the problem of women's freedom? It seems to me to be this: how to arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of activity--housework and child-raising. And second, if and when they choose housework and child-raising to have that occupation recognized by the world as work, requiring a definite economic reward and not merely entitling the performer to be dependent on some man.

Playing music well is difficult, yet the world has an abundance of fine performers. Explaining a little about music is easier, yet few do it well. Those who can do both supremely form a tiny club, whose honorary chairman is the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.

As a performer, much of my life has been spent in the spotlight. I know how important appearance can be to teens, especially the impact it can have on the way you feel about yourself.