Performing Quotes

“When you play, never mind who listens to you.”
― Robert Schumann

“Play always as if in the presence of a master.”
― Robert Schumann

“Endeavour to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly.”
― Robert Schumann, Advice To Young Musicians

“In musical performances one can sense that the person on stage is having a good time even if they're singing a song about breaking up or being in a bad way. For an actor this would be anathema, it would destroy the illusion, but with singing one can have it both ways. As a singer, you can be transparent and reveal yourself on stage, in that moment, and at the same time be the person whose story is being told in the song. Not too many kinds of performance allow that.”
― David Byrne, How Music Works

“Performers try harder.”
― David Byrne, How Music Works

“Give your soul to touch their hearts.”
― Dominique Champault

“Religion is a flimsy construction of rituals infused with arbitrary power. The gestures have always been empty; behind them stand hustlers no different from you. All that is required is a convincing performance.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

“if somebody doesn't have any talent, get off the stage! you're wasting my time.”
― Elaine Stritch

“It reset and mended my freshly damaged and distorted view of life, and made me recognize that this thing we call music, this primal expression that we reshape and refine and define ourselves with, is the gift I was given. The ability to communicate what others feel but cannot fully express, the passing down and around of songs and stories, from Pete Townshend to Joey Ramone to me, to the audiences who take the time and effort to support our work and give us a way to support ourselves -- I'm thinking this is what I am supposed to be doing.”
― Bob Mould, See A Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody

“I told Chris [Farley] and the writers, "Look. Whatever you do, the one thing to remember is: don't start from the ending [of the "van down by the river" sketch]. Start from the beginning, so that you have somewhere to go." Almost every time Chris did that sketch after I left SNL, he started by breaking the table.

I just became one of those dangerous examples of becoming addicted to the big laugh. You become addicted as a performer to that big moment, and you ask yourself, Why am I not just doing my big thing that gets the big reaction? Why am I not just standing up there and doing that?”
― Bob Odenkirk

“The perfection is not so much in the performance as in the journey towards it. This is the joy. You must burn!”
― Colum McCann, Dancer

“Theirs is a mismatched partnership, yet they're made for one another. Only together can they be their true selves. Outside in the real world, where they have no control over their environment, they are forced to adapt and perform. They are quiet and unassuming and I expect most people forget who they are soon after crossing paths with them. They get away with what they do by hiding in plain sight and by being ordinary. Nobody sees in them what I see because they have no reason to look Only I notice the hollowness of their eyes.”
― John Marrs, Keep It in the Family

“Under a man's hands--crush of his body--exigent breath--I remembered how to perform. Yes when I meant no. Lust or satisfaction or pleasure. Gratitude, as required, knowing that, naked beneath a man's disappointment, there lay this possibility of violence, as pungent and close-fitting as skin. One pound of flesh, paid freely, was preferable to a bloodier extraction. My past roles of sex kitten and hard bitch, blushing penitent, coy exotic, tease: I'd learned, long before this day, that I could play anything to avoid the role of victim.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

“I first started telling doctors about my abnormal growing toenails in 2014. They did not correctly treat them until 2019, which I found to be very strange and symptomatic of a poor performing healthcare system.”
― Steven Magee

“I have every expectation that the internet will replace much of the expensive and poorly performing healthcare system.”
― Steven Magee

“As a manager in high altitude astronomy, I found poor performing employees to be a feature of remote observatories.”
― Steven Magee

“I had observed similar problems in numerous poor performing high altitude workers I had supervised to the ill health that I displayed at age 48.”
― Steven Magee

“This isn’t about killing people for fun. This is about justice. Justice for all the people whose lives end up broken and wasted, because the thing they’ve been looking for all their life doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist! Even when they get it it’s not real! Doesn’t anyone see?”
― Angelo Marcos, The Artist

“For me, participating in the Pledge of Allegiance is akin to performing a Nazi salute, and that is why I never do it.”
― Steven Magee

“I've always got stage fright,' he says. 'There's always a level of fright. If I can just make it manageable rather than overwhelming then I've won.”
― Chris Heath, Reveal: Robbie Williams

“The workers compensation system for occupational diseases is the worst performing government social security department that I have ever encountered.”
― Steven Magee

“Dolly was giddy, infused with life and happiness and the peculiar energy that came from having slipped inside another skin. There was nothing that made her spin quite like it, the invisible moment of transition when she stopped being Dolly Smitham and became instead Someone Else. The details of that Someone Else weren't particularly important; it was the frisson of performance she adored, the sublime pleasure of masquerade. It was like stepping into another person's life. Stealing it for a time.”
― Kate Morton, The Secret Keeper

“I didn't know it, but what I was really looking for was compassion. Not consciously of course. I didn't consciously want to become compassionate. Who in his right mind would give up his place at the center of the universe? Compassion is scary. If you open up too much to people, they have power over you and make you i things for them. Better to keep them at a distance ...”
― Alan Alda, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

“Unstable internet messages on Zoom are sometimes being generated by the poor performing computer hardware.”
― Steven Magee

“When in the presence of armed police officers, you must be constantly performing a risk assessment of the hazards they present to you.”
― Steven Magee

“Going from looking after my child every day to having every day free was what I needed to recover my health. It was limiting what experiments I could run on my health, such as prolonged camping in nature, spending a lot of time outdoors near sea level and performing altitude tests.”
― Steven Magee

“When Bob Hope tells a joke, his audience enjoys it far more than if it were being told by a comedian of lesser stature, not simply because Hope tells a joke exceedingly well but because his audience expects him to be funny, wants him to be funny and is rather flattered that he is being funny for them.”
― Bill Veeck, The Hustler's Handbook

“When I'm on stage, my experience often goes something like this: Blankness . . . bliss . . . blankness . . . twinkle of awareness that rocking has been achieved . . . bliss . . . Voice of Observing Ego yelling over amplifiers, WOW! YOU ARE FUCKING KILLING IT DUUUUDE! . . . Clang! Wrong chord.”
― Jeff Tweedy, How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back

“So instead of hitting light switches, I switched lanes and that's when I joined the chorus. My mom taught me an important lesson that day: Don't let racist magnet school theater directors crush your dreams. Go sing instead.”
― Dulce Sloan, Hello, Friends!: Stories of Dating, Destiny, and Day Jobs

“You’re all so fucked up in such endlessly fascinating ways that I can’t help but love you. And if you love someone you want to know them, get them, get inside them… so to speak.”
― Aaron Posner, Stupid Fucking Bird