Quotes & Sayings About Improvisation And Life

The rules of improvisation appealed to me not only as a way of creating comedy, but as a worldview. Studying improvisation literally changed my life. It set me on a career path toward Saturday Night Live. It changed the way I look at the world, and it's where I met my husband. What has your cult done for you lately? — Tina Fey

He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet. — William Golding

Wasted tries, The many whys, Is it the soul of Compromise?
Lows and highs, Believing in lies, In life we have to improvise.
Frustration and cries, The last leg of sighs, You are the dreamer in disguise!
To the guilt say goodbyes, Open your eyes, Your soul - I do so recognize. — Julieanne O'Connor

One of the innate dilemmas of biography is that life is not much like a book. It rarely contains a clearly stated thesis, coherently developed. Life sprawls, stumbles, advances, retreats, gropes for the light switch, and once in a while makes intuitive leaps whose import is barely understood until later, if ever, by the leaper. Life seems to me an improvisation. — Jan Swafford

All of human civilization had been built out of the ruins of what had come before. Life itself was a grand chemical improvisation that began with the simplest replicators and grew and collapsed and grew again. Catastrophe was just one part of what always happened. It was a prelude to what came next. You — James S.A. Corey

Men in public life did their best to avoid accidental events or actions from being seen as unlucky. On a famous occasion during the civil war, Caesar tripped when disembarking from a ship on the shores of Africa and fell flat on his face. With his talent for improvisation, he spread out his arms and embraced the earth as a symbol of conquest. By quick thinking he turned a terrible omen of failure into one of victory. — Anthony Everitt

The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation. — Friedrich Nietzsche

My whole life has been one big improvisation. — Clint Eastwood

Sometimes people that are very good at improvisation in life, meaning like stage improvisation, aren't good in films because you have to ultimately take a scene where it needs to go. It's not about just saying something that's funny. You can say something funny but if it's not on story or driving the scene to its end it's really not very helpful at all. — Vince Vaughn

In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very 'gifted' improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action. — Malcolm Gladwell

That is what's important. The life of the line. When I draw, it's like tied and untied writing. My lines can be vivid or dead. The drawing is beautiful if the line is alive. A line is in danger of dying all along.
My method of drawing is very much like jazz improvisation. I improvise with the lines and the colors. ( ... )
There's great joy in drawing. Writing is drawing in different apparel, and drawing is another way of writing. And when I draw, I write. Perhaps when I write, I draw. — Jean Cocteau

I'm proud of my ability to understand what somebody else is trying to do and help them achieve it, because part of the aesthetic of improvisation is service. We don't lead, we only follow. You never say no. Serve the servant, follow the follower. And that's very valuable in your life, as well as very valuable in your work. — Stephen Colbert

But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things. — Alan Arkin

Life itself was an improvisation in which I was going to have to deal with what came to me and not think about what should have come. — Alan Alda

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation. — W. Somerset Maugham

Let me have two locks of your hair, and help my mother plait them into a bow-string for me. "Does anything depend on it asked Hallgerd". "My life depends on it replied Gunnar. — Anonymous

Stay fluid and roll with those changes. Life is just a big extended improvisation. — Jane Lynch

How does anyone know from moment to moment what to say or do next until he senses the reaction to what he just did? He doesn't know. Life is always action/reaction. No monologues. No prepared speeches. An improvisation no matter how we mentally rehearse our big moment. — Robert McKee

Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what's going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along. — Stephen Colbert

It will place a high value on communal life, more open leadership structures, and the contribution of all the people of God. It will be radical in its attempts to embrace biblical mandates for the life of locally based faith communities without feeling as though it has to reconstruct the first-century church in every detail. We believe the missional church will be adventurous, playful, and surprising. Leonard Sweet has borrowed the term "chaordic" to describe the missional church's inclination toward chaos and improvisation within the constraints of broadly held biblical values. It will gather for sensual-experiential-participatory worship and be deeply concerned for matters of justice-seeking and mercy-bringing. It will strive for a type of unity-in-diversity as it celebrates individual differences and values uniqueness, while also placing a high premium on community. — Michael Frost

When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say."
"Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise."
"What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?"
"You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another."
In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life. — Patti Smith

What an actor says is much, much less important than a life, so that's the great use for improvisation; you go, you find the life and then you add the words. — Giovanni Ribisi

Sholem [a painter] was saying that freedom, for him, is having the technical facility to be able to execute whatever he wants, just whatever image he has in his mind. But that's not freedom! That's control, or power. Whereas I think Margaux understands freedom to be the freedom to take risks, the freedom to do something bad or appear foolish. To not recognize that difference is a pretty big thing. [ ... ]
"It's like with improv," Misha said. "True improv is about surprising yourself
but most people won't improvise truthfully. They're afraid. What they do is pull from their bag of tricks. They take what they already know how to do and apply it to the present situation. But that's cheating! And cheating's bad for an artist. It's bad in life
but it's really bad in art." -p.20-1, How Should A Person Be — Sheila Heti

There is no facet of my professional life that doesn't require or request improvisation. — Marc Evan Jackson

All actors have to make the words fit in their mouths, and make the words the words fit to how you say it and how you make it life-like and make it look like what you're saying is just conversation that you're just thinking off the top of your head. That process is not quite improvisation. — Bruce Willis

Viewed from a different angle, my uncle's words offered up the rest of my life as an unexpected gift, an opportunity for the most radical improvisation. I could be whatever I wanted to be, as long as I didn't end up another corpse in the casket with a hole in his head. Anything went. Anything was permissible, as long as I lived. — Philip Connors

My advice to you: live in the moment. Stay fluid and roll with those changes. Life is just a big extended improvisation. Embrace the ever changing, ever evolving world with the best rule I've ever found. Say 'YES AND. — Jane Lynch

Even if the script's well written there's something about the life of an improvisation that resonates better than a written word, sometimes. — John Travolta

Gastronomic boredom leads to lots of unhealthy eating. If you don't make improvisation and experimentation part of your eating life, you are sure to find yourself in an eating rut. — Mireille Guiliano

A disgruntled reflection on my own life as a sort of desperate improvisation in which I was constantly trying to make something coherent from conflicting elements to fit rapidly changing settings. — Mary Catherine Bateson

Life is improvisation. All of those [improv] classes were like church to me. The training had seeped into me and changed who I am. — Tina Fey

Life is improvisation. — Tina Fey

Here's how I learned to improvise: I played some music in the studio and I started to move. It sounds obvious, but I wonder how many people, whatever their medium, appreciate the gift of improvisation. It's your one opportunity in life to be completely free, with no responsibilities and no consequences. You don't have to be good or even interesting. It's you alone, with no one watching or judging. If anything comes of it, you decide whether the world gets to see it. In essence, you are giving yourself permission to daydream during working hours. — Twyla Tharp

I learned at a very young age that music teaches you about life. When you're in the midst of improvisation, there is no yesterday and no tomorrow - there is just the moment that you are in. In that beautiful moment, you experience your true insignificance to the rest of the universe. It is then, and only then, that you can experience your true significance. — Charlie Haden