Audience First Quotes & Sayings

If you go on stage with the wrong attitude, or something in your performance is off, you can lose an audience in the first minute. That first minute is crucial. — Allan Carr

The first concert I attended was an Elvis concert when I was eleven. Even at that age he made me realize the tremendous effect a performer could have on an audience. — Cher

Dancing is my number one love. That was my first goal as a child. I would love to do stage, maybe do Chicago. I love being in front of an audience. It's so stimulating. I also love to barbecue. — Carmen Electra

The first problem I had with conducting was coming out on stage and turning my back on the audience. It was an utterly foreign sensation. I always felt as if my rear end were hanging out. That particular portion of my anatomy suddenly seemed enormous, living a life of its own, engaged in its own relationship with the public behind my back. For the first couple of years I conducted, I sat on a chair in front of the orchestra, to help quell that particular discomfort. — Leon Fleisher

I never could tell a joke. I just started talking to the audience, and when the drunks would yell, "Hey, when do the broads come on?" I got good at saying, "Relax. Clear your skin up first." They called me "the insult guy," but it's never mean-spirited. I'm just exaggerating everything about us and about life. — Don Rickles

'A Little Nightmare Music' is the first show we created. It's about all the nightmares that can happen in the span of a concert. When things go wrong - when the lights go out or a cellphone rings - that's when an audience suddenly comes alive, wondering what's going to happen next. Things going wrong often leads to something good. — Richard Hyung-ki Joo

If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience. If I had to choose, it would be theater and doing the occasional movie once in a while, and spending time doing nothing. — Enrico Colantoni

Yes, yes, theater in general is just going to always be my first love, performing for a live audience. — Megan Hilty

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. — Shelby Lynne

And young people who are learning digital skills discover that the real challenge is coming up with an image that resonates, first of all, with your self and hopefully, with an audience. They can learn all these new techniques and think that they're easier to use, but creating great images isn't about the tools. — Jerry Uelsmann

I look at an audience kind of like meeting my in-laws for the first time. You want to be yourself, but you still want to be somebody that they like. When I go on the stage each night, I try my best to outguess my audience. — B.B. King

You never know who's going to be in the audience. You never know who is going to be hearing that piece for the first time, and you never know who is going to be hearing that piece for the last time. — Robert Shaw

I hope they get something of interest out of it, but I'd rather they all hate it and I like it, instead of vice versa ... I make films to please myself first, and if the audience likes them, all the better. — Terry Zwigoff

I'm nervous the first few songs, and then I'm like, 'I got this audience. I'm ready!' — Drake Bell

Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works. — Steve Martin

When the audience first sees Cooper talking into his tape recorder at the beginning of 'Twin Peaks,' I think that's the greatest introduction to a character I've seen in my career. It tells you everything about the guy right there in a few minutes as well as bringing up a whole load of questions. — Kyle MacLachlan

The first time I got up in front of an audience was terror, abject terror, which continued for another four or five years. There still is, a little bit. — Bob Newhart

Not my political ideas. Conservatism didn't buy this house. First and foremost I'm a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime. — Rush Limbaugh

There's a kind of dynamic quality about theater and that dynamic quality expresses itself in relation to, first of all, the environment in which it's being staged; then the audience, the nature of the audience, the quality of the audience. — Wole Soyinka

I used to first go on to entertain an audience. But now I go, and this is really true - I go on to have fun with a crowd of my chums. — Norman Wisdom

Sixties folk rock was my original muse and the folk audience-people who listen to music off the beaten track-fostered my career. I definitely don't want to abandon the genre but I also need to make sure I'm Dar Williams first. — Dar Williams

'Legends Walking' was the first of my books to go to a second printing based on strong initial orders, but much of that printing never found its audience. — Jane Lindskold

Suppose that a person writes what she must. That is only the first step of becoming a writer. The work must survive the moment of creation. It must get out to an audience. She or he must dare to show the work. She must risk ridicule, misunderstanding, scandal, condemnation, & what's often worse, none of the above: silence. No attention at all. — Marge Piercy

I'm dating myself by saying this, but I was the test audience for 'Space Invaders.' I remember when that was the first game that wasn't a pinball game. I spent a lot of money on 'Space Invaders,' in the form of quarters, of course. — John C. Reilly

For the first time I go to La Scala, for each thing, for each rehearsal, my knees were shaking. But the audience was very fine with me. — Ildar Abdrazakov

The major caveat in all of comedy is that it's all instinctive. There's no true criteria. There is no right or wrong. Ultimately, often I'm surprised at what an audience will or will not laugh at. I have to stay very, very open to an audiences first exposure to that material and how they react to it. — Larry Charles

My whole career began because I was always putting my music on the Internet. By the time I had my first tour, I had an audience everywhere I went, because people were listening online. — Jason Mraz

When I sing, I feel like when you're first in love. It's more than sex. It's that point two people can get to they call love, when you really touch someone for the first time, but it's gigantic, multiplied by the whole audience. I feel chills. — Janis Joplin

My belief is that if I can achieve that level of entertainment by making the audience happy or sad or angry, then I have succeeded as an actor and have done my job. The profits and the fame as an actor will eventually surface, but first and foremost comes the work as an actor. — Cole Hauser

I'm very aware we are the first generation ever to have such incredible opportunities to express ourselves publicly to a worldwide audience. — Sara Sheridan

You cannot hurt animals, so what do I do? I kill the dog first. Then I do it with the boy. You're not supposed to break the illusion of this being a film, so I make the actor talk to the audience. Provocation is the principle of the whole film [ Funny Games]. It is very ironic. — Michael Haneke

Sojourner Truth, who squelched the heckler with an oft-quoted speech. In the first place, she said, Jesus came from "God and a woman - man had nothing to do with it."66 Secondly, Truth asserted that women were not inherently weak and helpless. Raising herself to her full height of six feet, flexing a muscled arm, and bellowing with a voice one observer likened to the apocalyptic thunders, Truth informed the audience that she could outwork, outeat, and outlast any man. Then she challenged: "Ain't I a woman?"67 — Paula J. Giddings

I always tell that to young people - go to college, do theater, work with an audience. Don't try to learn how to act in front of millions and millions of people. Don't make that your first ambition, to be on a sitcom or get into the movies. Learn who you are as an actor, and the best way to do that is to do it in front of an audience. — John Lithgow

Jowell fell back on the same justification for funding the arts that the first chairman of the Arts Council, John Maynard Keynes, had deployed in 1945. Art was something produced by people with special skills, who set their own standards of excellence; they needed to be supported to do this, and the audience needed to be encouraged to appreciate this excellence, by being given subsidised access to it. And for all of Jowell's attempts to transcend instrumentalism, the purpose of culture continued to be to help the government 'to transform our society into a place of justice, talent and ambition where individuals can fulfil their true potential'.22 — Robert Hewison

I was probably six years old when I first sang before an audience. — Brian McKnight

It's very important to me to find ways to relate the audience to the characters. This is the first thing to go in most mainstream horror films. — Ti West

I wrote my first play, Uncommon Women and Others, in the hopes of seeing an all-female curtain call in the basement of the Yale School of Drama. A man in the audience stood up during a post show discussion and announced, "I can't get into this, it's all about girls." I thought to myself, "Well, I've been getting in to Hamlet and Laurence of Arabia my whole life, so you better start trying." — Wendy Wasserstein

I don't feel the obligation to have a big explosion in the first 20 seconds so the audience doesn't turn on another channel. We are trying to make something that looks like a feature film that was bought for television and I think we are succeeding. — Tom Selleck

Richard subtly slipped in the fact that he is thriller writer Richard Renwick, creator of MI5 hero Jackman Tripp. Unfortunately none of them had ever heard of Richard or his hero, which led to a prickly first day on safari. But now he's back in form, doing what he does best: charming his audience. Laying it on too thick, I think. Far too thick. But if I complain about it later, I know exactly what he'll say. It's what writers have to do, Millie. We have to be sociable and bring in new readers. Funny how Richard never wastes his time being sociable with — Tess Gerritsen

Five hours after presenting a ... lecture on cancer before an audience of about 400 in L.A., the windshield was shot out of my car on the road back to San Francisco. The next night the glass window in the tailgate (the back window) was shot out (300 miles removed from the first shooting) ... The late Arthur T. Harris, MD, was threatened by two men with assassination if he continued to use Laetrile. — Ernst T. Krebs

Although it is a fantasy film, it's as real as it can be. You have to imagine that an audience will buy their ticket to a cinema and get on a first-class flight and journey to Middle Earth. — Orlando Bloom

When you introduce a character and show him for the first time, don't show him fully lit. Don't show him one hundred percent to the audience. Show maybe fifty percent or sixty percent so the audience can fill in the dark spots. — Peter Stormare

Khrushchev first denounced Stalin's purges at the Soviet Communist Party's 20th Congress. After his dramatic speech, someone in the audience shouted out, asking what Khrushchev had been doing at the time. Khrushchev responded by asking the questioner to please stand up and identify himself. The audience remained silent. Khrushchev replied: "That is what I did, too. — Avinash K. Dixit

The success of a play, especially one's first success, is somewhat like pushing against a door which is suddenly opened that was always securely shut until then. For myself, the experience was invigorating. It suddenly seemed that the audience was a mass of blood relations, and I sensed a warmth in the world that had not been there before. It made it possible to dream of daring more and risking more. — Arthur Miller

Equal rights meant just that, rights for both blacks and women, with the association working for both at the same time. Women should not be told to "stand back and wait." [Frederick] Douglas said that women should be generous and allow the Negro to get his vote first. A young woman in the audience replied that she did not think it generous "to compel women to yield on all questions ... simply because they are women. — Miriam Gurko

I'd caught what cameras call an updraft: just as the viewers got over the first rush of interest, others smelled the excitement and tuned in. The surprise of the newcomers strengthened the scent, attracting still more people, in a spiral that could make the feedback escalate out of control. Wave upon wave of astonishment crashed through me. I tried to look down, but the curiosity of millions forced my head back up. I stood there staring at the whale like someone forced to look into the sun, unable to turn away, though my mind cringed from the sight and my eyes were burning. It was not just an updraft, but riptide: feedback so strong that it flooded out my own emotions and derailed my thoughts. The audience grew so large and so greedy that it wouldn't even let me blink. — Raphael Carter

I was the first one to allow a projectile to come off of the stage and into the audience. And I kind of take responsibility for the mosh pit. — Gallagher

And by the right thing, I mean that whatever step we take next, the first criteria we should consider is the people who have been loyal to us, thus far, which is primarily our audience. — Neil Cross

The best illusions aren't a matter of technology, but of performance. First, you open the minds of the audience. Then you fill them with exactly what you want them to know. — Dan Koboldt

For Scary Movie 2, we had a due date and had to work fast. And though there's a lot of pressure, as artists, we just block it out. So really, the pressure comes from us. That's how the first movie happened. There was no outside pressure: we wanted to hit the audience hard. — Shawn Wayans

I try not to think too much about an audience when I'm writing the first draft of a book - at that stage, the prospect of anyone reading what I've written would be enough to scare me into setting my laptop on fire. — Robin Wasserman

Somewhere in this process, I begin reading and showing my book to my audience. When I say my audience, I mean a single imaginary child who is a blend of myself as a young person, the students in my wife's classroom of first- through third-graders, and the students from two classrooms I visit regularly in the Bronx, New York. — Chris Raschka

Songs come alive every night and can be a new experience for someone. You might have someone in the audience who has never seen us before and hearing it for the first time. We are aware of that. — John Petrucci

Set foot in his classroom, and you'll see that he hasn't quite given up on these dreams. True to his compulsive nature and eclectic taste, he punctuates his courses with entertaining routines to keep his students engaged, playing four songs at the start of each class and tossing candy bars to the first students who shout out the correct answers to music trivia. This is how a poster of a rapper ended up on his wall. "If you want to engage your audience, if you really want to grab their attention, you have to know the world they live in, the music they listen to, the movies they watch," he explains. "To most of these kids, accounting is like a root canal. But when they hear me quote Usher or Cee Lo Green, they say to themselves, 'Whoa, did that fat old white-haired guy just say what I thought he said?' And then you've got 'em. — Adam M. Grant

When English author Anna Sewell wrote Black Beauty, in the late nineteenth century, she said that her aim was to "induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses." Though now considered a children's classic, the book was originally intended for an adult audience. Narrated from the horse's point of view, the novel describes Black Beauty's life, from his earliest memory, of "a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it" to his wretched existence pulling a heavy load for a cruel peddler. The sentimental and emotionally wrenching book was wildly popular, quickly becoming a bestseller first in England and then in the United States, where it became a favorite of the progressive movement. Sewell's book was the first to popularize interest in the plight of the horse and to generate widespread concern about the beast of burden's treatment. — Elizabeth Letts

I liked watching more than I liked being part of it and for the first time I realized that it was OK to just be an observer. Some of us were actors and some of us were the audience. Both were important roles. — Peter Monn

I usually read a script from an audience perspective first, and then look more closely at the character only. — Colm Meaney

When I performed at 'Open Mic U.K.' I had this connection with the audience that I'd never felt before, and I loved it. It was my first big thing, and looking out into the crowd ... was just amazing. — Birdy

My first kiss ... and it was everything I'd imagined it to be, with the exception of there being an audience for it. But it was hard to acknowledge them or their cheering and whistles. Flames scorched my already heated skin. Dez's lips moved against mine, working the tight seam open. I gasped, wondering where in the world he'd learned to kiss like that. Jealousy flared like a beacon on the heels of that thought. Okay. I didn't want to know how he'd learned. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I write everything I do. On the average, it takes you about sixty months from the first molecule of an idea to it being in front of an audience. I'm actually somebody that creates their own stuff. — Mike Myers

The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me. — Michael Tilson Thomas

First, stop making formula films that people have already started rejecting.

This year, several big budget films haven't been entertained by the audience.Still stars continue to dictate terms.

The youth wants new good content.

From htcafe
Saturday,Dec.20,2014 — Anurag Kashyap

My audience is made up of two groups of people. The first group includes people whose roots are deep in the Christian faith, but for whom the traditional symbols, as traditionally understood, no longer make sense. The other audience is the audience that has left. I call them the Church Alumni Association, citizens of the secular city. They are a bit nostalgic about this faith of their childhood, but they aren't really interested in trotting it out or becoming involved with it again as it is presently organized. — John Shelby Spong

Just as violence is the last refuge of the inarticulate, so it is also the first resort of the incompetent, the easy out for the man who is capable of expressing himself only in the most primitive and vulgar of dramatic terms. He leaves us with only the obscenity of violence per se - and the pornographer thereof will always be with us, in film as in any other medium. And so will his audience. — Judith Crist

My first book, 'Fast Forward', was about growing up in the shadow of Hollywood and how kids are affected by the culture of materialism and the cult of celebrity, and I've often felt the reason my work has an audience in the U.K. is because it's everything the British love to hate about the Americans. — Lauren Greenfield

My first 'Tonight Show' was just one of those things - I mean this seriously - a cosmic, meant-to-be coming together of circumstance. You walk out there to do your first 'Tonight Show': Is the audience going to be hot? Are you going to be on fire? It's like an athlete: Are you going to have your moves at a peak? — Garry Shandling

Despite being able to demonstrate a very large audience, major advertisers at first wouldn't touch Limbaugh. — Paul Weyrich

It is truly no feat to crack a nut, and therefore no one would think to gather an audience for the purpose of entertaining them with nutcracking. But if he should do so, and if he should succeed in his aim, then it cannot be a matter of mere nutcracking. Or alternatively, it is a matter of nutcracking, but as it turns out we have overlooked the art of nutcracking because we were so proficient at it that it is this new nutcracker who is the first to demonstrate what it actually entails, whereby it could be even more effective if he were less expert in nutcracking than the majority of us. — Franz Kafka

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character ofthe speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. — Aristotle.

He knew viewers made snap judgments about likability in the first seven seconds. Plus, besides relating to the audience, newcomers and rehabilitated personalities were more likely to be loyal. From his earliest days with Mike Douglas and Nixon, Ailes excelled when he created his own talent, molding and shaping them in his image. "If I have any ability," he later remarked, "it's probably to find talented people and set up a structure that they can work in. — Anonymous

What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously - but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself. — Woody Allen

Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad. — Aravind Adiga

When I get a script, it's the only time that I get to be an audience member with the first-time experience of that movie. That's the first and only time. — Dennis Quaid

The mistake people that want to be actors make is to move to New York or L.A. right away. But it's like ... go act somewhere first. Be an actor. A story is a story, and an audience is an audience, no matter where you're doing it. — Conrad Ricamora

I was a vegetarian when we shot the first film(Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle), and I generally eat organic as much as possible. I know this is so disappointing to the audience, which is why I don't talk about it a lot, but I don't smoke weed, I don't eat fast food. — Kal Penn

The great times are when you put a game on location and see others play it for the first time. After all, we are really kind of an entertainer. You perform for the joy of the audience. — Eugene Jarvis

Most reasons to delay are invalid if you get right to the core: no time, no money, no audience. These are all future concerns, which make it hard to start anything. Worry about those things later or not at all. Make small decisions at first, and start moving in a direction that feels right. — Paul Jarvis

Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one. — Dan Bern

During the first few minutes of your presentation, your job is to assure the audience members that you are not going to waste their time and attention. — Dale Ludwig

I first felt successful when I was 13 and in a show called Seesaw. I came offstage and heard the applause of the theater audience and felt a sense of accomplishment. Around that time my role model for success was Burt Lancaster. He was one of the first ac. — Giancarlo Esposito

When I was sixteen, I danced before an audience without music. At the end someone suddenly cried 'its Death and the Maiden'. But that was not my intention; I was only endeavoring to express my first knowledge of the underlying tragedy in all seemingly joyous manifestation. The dance according with my comprehension, should have been called 'Life and the Maiden'. — Isadora Duncan

"Sesame Street" was really the first kid's show that my dad did. He did a couple of TV specials that were targeted for kids before "Sesame Street," but really, it was, it's kind of going back to our roots, when we start to get adult. This show gets very adult sometimes, and that's because of the audience. — Brian Henson

I just saw the movie for the first time in its entirely last night. It's really cool when you're in with an audience that's so tuned in and plugged in to what's going on. — Sasha Alexander

When I first read 'The River,' I had theories on what it was about, but once we got into rehearsal, I realized it's much simpler: It's about how human beings try to connect. The play holds a mirror up to the audience, and they take from it what's relevant to their lives. — Laura Donnelly

My audience is comprised of three categories. The first category contains the people who decide after the first five minutes that they've made a mistake and leave. The second category is the people who give the film a chance and leave annoyed after 40 minutes. The third category includes the people that watch the whole film and return to see it again. If I'm able to persuade 33% of the audience to stay, then I can say that I've succeeded. — Peter Greenaway

Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience - 4000 critics. — Mark Twain

In England, when we're at drama school, we spend a lot of time learning the craft from playwrights and stage actors, who are very well trained in the basics of acting because they need to get it right the first time - you can't have second or third takes when you're in front of a live audience, unlike in film. — Sam Claflin

I am quite short, but that never comes across when I'm onstage in front of people. When I get offstage and greet an audience afterwards, their first reaction is to comment on my height because it seems like a very drastic difference. — Kaki King

Regardless of the age of the people in the audience, they are clapping, screaming with joy and enjoying each and every note. I used to think classical music was boring. But that was because I never really gave it a chance. When I first saw 2CELLOS' cover of Smooth Criminal, I was mesmerized by their talent and instantly intrigued. With just two instruments, they created a sound so powerful and incredible, a sound I had never known could come from a cello. — Valentina Gomaz

When you're on stage performing stand-up, things only happen one time. I've done bits where I improv a joke, and people are dying. The next show, I try to repeat it, I can't do it. Because with the first audience that was our moment. It can't happen the same way again. We were all there: a certain type of people were at that show and we all got it. — J. B. Smoove

I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience. — Ian Rankin

When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema, its violence, its naivety, the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films, violence is made consumable. — Michael Haneke

I first discovered YouTube while browsing the web, and then I found people just talking into their cameras. I never even knew it was a thing you could do. William Sledd was my first YouTube obsession. He was so unapologetically himself, and just had fun talking to his audience about things that interested him. I thought - if he could do it, why couldn't I? — Tyler Oakley

A writer who wants to be translated and published abroad faces a very difficult challenge: first of all, he must make sure that his book is cosmopolitan in the best sense of the word, that it is interesting to a global audience. Nobody is going to read about problems that they don't care about. — Sergei Lukyanenko

The first monster that an audience has to be scared of is the filmmaker. They have to feel in the presence of someone not confined by the normal rules of propriety and decency. — Wes Craven

You can never judge any music by their audience. That's the main reason people in England have a prejudice against someone like Skrillex. You judge people by their music. That's always been first and foremost. — Diplo

I made a point of always teaching undergraduates because they are not a captive audience ... I always tried out my research ideas first in the classroom to get feedback from people who didn't have to listen to me if I didn't make it interesting. — Edmund Morgan

My first-ever date on my first tour, the sound completely cut out. So I had to go on and just shout loudly to the audience. — Rebecca Ferguson

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then — Henry David Thoreau

I usually look at things like that from an audience perspective first, then have a closer look at the specific character they're talking about me for. — Colm Meaney