Performances Quotes & Sayings

James Taylor is the kind of person I always thought the word 'folksinger' referred to. He writes and sings songs that are reflections of his own life, and performs in them in his own style. All of his performances are marked by an eloquent simplicity. — Jon Landau

The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded performances; to give young musicians their first debut on a recording. These are all things that big record companies would never touch because there is no money in it! — Gunther Schuller

I would love to document the Roots; I think they have an interesting story. I have a curiosity about them. Their musicality and their live performances I think would be great, and I have a feeling that there are stories behind each one of them. — Michael Rapaport

The truth is, a director wins an Oscar for a writer's script and actors' performances. — George Cukor

It is a curious fact that the delicate acoustic arrangements of a music hall can be impaired by the music of inefficient, discordant orchestras, and for this reason poor musical performances have been forbidden in some places. If a poor performance could affect adversely the acoustics of a hall, would not an able performance tend to improve them? — Robert Henri

I want to congratulate again Mike Dean. I think his performance was unbelievable and I think when referees have unbelievable performances, I think it's fair that as managers we give them praise. So fantastic performance. — Jose Mourinho

Personally, I always felt times aren't so excellent as are performances. — Bill Rodgers

My manager came up with the idea of taking a Pro Tool rig out on the road to record every night and I thought it was a great idea. I felt like it would be good to record over a certain period of time and then take the best performances of that collection of recordings. It appealed to me that it wasn't going to be from just one location. — Josh Turner

Distinguish between the person and the behavior or performance. — Stephen Covey

I've auditioned for roles that involved voice, but I don't like it. I feel like, I can't do this in front of you. It seems so separate - I don't share it with a lot of people. And I'm not into public performances. — Amanda Seyfried

I want to be known for my performances and doing my craft well, not for funny stuff I post on Twitter or whatever. — Billy Magnussen

It's interesting how you can blur the line between acting and living and learn from your performances. I'm just trying to keep learning as much as I can and not get caught up in all the distractions that can play havoc with your mind. — Kristen Stewart

I consider the first 20 performances just learning the piece. Think about it this way: If you think about a pianist who plays a Schubert sonata through his whole lifetime - if you listen to Rubenstein or Horowitz playing their repertoire later in their life, you understand the richness with which they play that music, and how differently they must have played it when they were younger. — Philip Glass

The theater of my mind has a seating capacity of just one, and its sold out for all performances. — Henry Winkler

Having done Spaced, I can't even remember it being that difficult on Spaced, but we know what the end's going to be like. We know why we're putting in this amount of work, or why a shot might be particularly tricky, because we know that what we do is create a whole package. It's the writing, the performances, and the style of camerawork, that's what we're working toward, and we're prepared for that. — Simon Pegg

I find that 'Ghostbusters' and 'Alien' actually have a lot in common in that they're both so naturalistic in the performances. It feels like people you could be hanging out with right now in this room, yet they're on a spaceship or killing ghosts. But the way they talk is never heightened or otherwordly. — Akiva Schaffer

While I used to make my living principally as a record producer, as time went on, I had to depend more and more on my live performances because of the evolution of the record industry, which has de-emphasized what made it possible to make a living. — Todd Rundgren

If we had an audience to play to, the performance would have gotten too big. Sizing our performances to the camera was an important journey for me at least. — Laura Benanti

If a seminary or Christian college has a wise provost or dean or department chair, he or she will realize that they need some faculty who are master teachers but publish little, and some scholars who can both teach and publish, and some who would be better just being research professors. It takes a variety of faculty to make up a good school. But alas, even in schools that have such administrators, promotion and sabbaticals are often based on publications or planned publications, not just on reviews of one's classroom performances. Thus, some scholars who find research and writing a huge cross to bear are forced to carry that cross all the way to Golgotha Publishing House in order to get promoted. It really ought not to be that way at a Christian school, where the main goal should be training students or budding clergy in the way that they should go. — Ben Witherington III

I still believe that 'No Smoking' is one of my best performances. — John Abraham

You do sometimes watch performances and just think, 'I may as well give up. I won't reach that. I may as well give up.' But then there are other actors you watch and just think, 'Oh my God, yes, I want to try and do that. Try and be like that'. And Bryan Cranston is someone who I'd like to try and be like. — Tom Mison

I was in New York for a little while, doing some really bad theater. I did some great stuff, too, but there were Saturday morning theater performances in one-third-filled church basements. So, I paid my dues. — Silas Weir Mitchell

You have actors who begin at a certain young age and there's very little change in their technique and the depth of their performances; they're the same 30 years later. — Alec Baldwin

I've never really felt like a journalist. I've felt like a writer and a diarist. I have made myself vulnerable in my writing, and I think that vulnerability makes people strong. My favorite performances or works of art are always people showing that side of themselves. — Tavi Gevinson

I'd gone through periods where I didn't work live performances for probably seven or eight months at a time. — Johnny Rivers

There is no strong performance without a little fanaticism in the performer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments when they were superior to themselves, -when a light, a freedom, a power came to them which lifted them to performances far better than they could reach at other times. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The script and the performances and the style all clicked. — Edgar Wright

I've realized that I can do performances. — David Hockney

Live performances make music important. Recording is cool and fun, and it's nice to document the thing you made, but the goal in my mind is to perform. — Dan Deacon

Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing. — William Gilmore Simms

I already love acting and I love actors, so being able to communicate with actors and to bring performances out of them, and to tell a story and aid them, is really exciting for me. — Eric Balfour

Hence [through No Child Left Behind] the state has been given power...to fire all teachers and principles. So here we have an unusual case in which the students are engaged in the performances, but the high stakes have been displaced onto the teachers who are preparing their charges for the exams. — James M. Lang

I'm always so amazed by which performances work really, really well and which ones don't. But I think it's just mostly, 'She's Out Of My League,' so many people saw that movie on DVD and on the plane. Just millions of people saw that movie. That's the reason I'm somewhat famous. — T. J. Miller

Don't try to be just like some other singer hitting it big - find your own style and be honest in your performances. And never underestimate your audience. — Tony Bennett

I do work a lot. I mean, most of my income, I would say, comes from live performances. And then you've got publishing, you've got record royalties. — Elton John

I'm a stage actor, and we never get to see our performances. — Clarke Peters

Maybe it's because I come from a very utopian world of being a comedian, but I'm used to many live comedy performances going on in any city I'm in, and each of us is trying to be the best at what we do. I don't think of it as a competition so much as a thriving comedy economy. — Trevor Noah

I came up in the theater, and I learned pretty quickly that reading a review, whether it's good or bad, can strangely affect the next performances, because you're reacting to something that's been said about you. So I tend to avoid that stuff pretty studiously. — Dallas Roberts

I really trust the authenticity of real people and my job is to get them to be themselves in front of the camera. Often what happens is, you'll get a newcomer in front of the camera and they'll freeze up or they imitate actors or other performances that they've admired and so they stop becoming themselves. And so my job as the director is just to always return them to what I first saw in them, which was simply an uncensored human being. — Steven Spielberg

I think I was first to do live performances on a modern electronic sound synthesizer. — John Eaton

Everything I do is geared towards improving my next performance. — Carolina Kluft

I feel that classical music should be a more recognizable part of everyone's entertainment. It has been my hope that through live concerts, motion pictures, recordings, international competitions, and interesting public forums, a larger group of people will learn to love classical music and attend live concert performances. — Jose Iturbi

Drue [Langlois] and I started making music together before we started the Art Lodge, so I guess musical collaboration came first. The music we made, and our performances, always had a visual component. I could never play an instrument, so these other elements compensated for that a little. — Michael Dumontier

It's always interesting to watch people who have been incredibly successful in their own businesses work in a group made up of equally strong personalities. It takes a special kind of leader who can effectively manage a team of veritable strangers and find the best way to get strong, winning performances from them. — Donald Trump

If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him. — Greil Marcus

An amazing performance is always a reflection of awesome amounts of practice. — Robin Sharma

I think you get the most honest performances when an actor shows up to set with their lines memorized. That's a very important thing that a lot of people seem to forget. You have a pre-conceived notion of what you want the scene to be, but once you get there, that goes out the window and it turns out to be a way that you never imagined. — Shailene Woodley

If you really want to judge of the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be. — Swami Vivekananda

A sloppy performance in a photograph is as distressing as a sloppy performance in music. — Fred Picker

I've always liked artists like Chris Burden, who would take performances, put them in galleries, and then do things that were on the edge. — David Blaine

Actors are like kids, they need to play a little bit. And that's the nature of their job, they need to shake off some energy and then you as the director get them back on track. When you do loosen up the reins, you get some amazing things, but you have to wring out the performances for every last good drop. — David Ayer

As much as it's nice to step into that massive world of Hollywood and be a big, famous actor, I prefer the career of actors that have really chosen smartly and done really amazing performances. Maybe they're not as known, but their careers are a bit more interesting. — Idris Elba

I generally find an affinity with a lot of the people I play and I suppose if I didn't feel an affinity for them then they wouldn't be particularly good performances. — Hugo Weaving

... the distance is commonly very great between actual performances and speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose, that as much as has been done to-day may be done to-morrow; but on the morrow some difficulty emerges or some external impediment obstructs. Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure; all take their turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot, be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker's mind. He that runs against Time, has an antagonist not subject to casualties.
From Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets series, published in 3 volumes between 1779 and 1781, on Alexander Pope — Samuel Johnson

I have never stopped performing live.I've been blessed with the talent to sing and play the piano so I can fit into a lot of different configurations and venues. I play public and private performances and it has served me well. And I've been fortunate to work in Europe and Asia as well as The US. So for those who have not attended my shows, it doesn't mean I'm not performing. — Oleta Adams

I would love to get great performances from actors as a director, because that's what I'm always looking for, a director that's going to help me go places I've never been before. — Aaron Eckhart

A multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads, in a treeless communal waste, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group, witnessing the same television performances, eating the same tasteless prefabricated foods, from the same freezers, conforming in every outward and inward respect to the common mold. — Lewis Mumford

When 'Carmen' premiered in 1875, it was panned by the critics. It survived 45 performances. It was called a musical and moral outrage. After Bizet died, at age 37, 'Carmen' became wildly popular. If you believe in your creation, and the rest of the world is laughing or yelling 'Boo,' don't give up. — Karen DeCrow

I watch a lot of different films. A lot of different performances and I find a lot of little things from the films or things that actors do or people in real life who have behaviors or idiosyncrasies that I like or find interesting and I try to remember that. And then I'll do a prayer. I'll do a prayer to ask the character or the spirit of the character to come and visit me. And let's work together. — Wesley Snipes

I don't want costumes and makeup between me and the audience - I want more direct communication. There's something for me about being honest on stage, and I'm at my most honest when I'm behind a piano. So I prefer my concert performances. — Jason Robert Brown

Of course there are some actors that are better than others and performances that are better than others, but they're always embedded in the greater film. They are mediated through the work of so many other people: the director directs, the lighter sets the scene, the editors edit, the music gets put to it. — James Franco

McDougall does not dispute the thesis as to
the collective inhibition of intelligence in groups
(p. 41). He says that the minds of lower intelligence
bring down those of a higher order to their own
level. The latter are obstructed in their activity,
because in general an intensification of emotion
creates unfavourable conditions for sound intellectual
work, and further because the individuals are intimidated
by the group and their mental activity is
not free, and because there is a lowering in each
individual of his sense of responsibility for his own
performances. — Sigmund Freud

I love to perform not only music, but to make performances extremely visual, and create almost a magical fantasy. It's really an uplifting style of art that combines visuals and music in very dreamlike ways. — Lindsey Stirling

My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; we've become the most famous bad orchestra in the world. — Alexander McCall Smith

I did not set out to be beloved and just, only strong."
'A King can be better than that," the Prince insisted.
"And so we all begin, determined to better our fathers' performances, knowing we can change the very nature of humanity, make it better, cleaner. But then daggers strike in the night, and peasants revolt, and all manner of atrocities become a necessity as breakfast. Only Princes believe in the greater good. Kings know there is only Reign, and all things may be committed in its holy name ... — Catherynne M Valente

To be overcome with the ultimate goal often interferes with performance. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

What I want is that I can match my performances during training so I can be satisfied with myself. — Liu Xiang

Benefit performances, bad paintings and statues, philanthropic societies, Gypsies, schools, subscription dinners, carousing, the Masons, churches, books - no one and nothing met with refusal, — Leo Tolstoy

When we ... devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, ihen happiness comes of itself. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Sam [Mendes] said he took advantage of the fact that Kate and I were so close for many years. He knew it was something he could harness in our performances, and we knew that too. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Great individuals and great performances build a team, which produces brilliant performances. — Sachin Tendulkar

When you have two notes from two different performances Auto-Tuned, it sounds like a car horn. And then you add harmonies, and it starts to sound like baby seals honking. - Tom Lord-Alge on Auto-Tune — Greg Milner

There are many likewise, who go on in a round of duties, a model of performances, that think they shall go to heaven; but if you examine them, though they have a Christ in their heads, they have no Christ in their hearts. — George Whitefield

I make 50 cents for showing up ... and the other 50 cents is based on my performance. — Steve Jobs

I really love watching the 70s live performance TV series "The Midnight Special" and "The Old Grey Whistle Test". Those are the best performances you've ever seen, and they sound incredible. — Feist

I was always very dramatic - my family would probably use the word 'dramatic' - as a child; always putting on performances, making everyone come watch, and pay to watch. I was very business-savvy as a child. — Margot Robbie

A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances. — Franz Liszt

One of the things about being a minority actor is that you don't have that opportunity as some of your counterparts to keep that flow, to constantly be going from one thing to the other, so when you see really great performances out there by some black folks, you know it's coming from somewhere deep, because they just don't work as much. — Georg Stanford Brown

Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known. — Dennis Hopper

God is more concerned about your heart than your performance. If your heart is right, your performance will eventually catch up. — Joyce Meyer

I don't think anyone could ever be wholly satisfied with their performance. — Tom Hollander

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance. — Samuel Johnson

I went to ballet school for nine years, and there was an agent for the whole school who happened to be there visiting one of the performances. She suggested an audition. — Sarah Sutton

My family traveled with a whole community to European festivals. My mum did gymnastics, freak show performances, and swung fire in the circus, so I followed her footsteps. — Neon Hitch

I don't work with Sia every day; it depends what we do, whether we do performances or music videos, so the schedule is weird, but when we're off, we always try to see each other in between. We just hang out; we went to brunch one time, but for the most part I go to her house, and we eat and watch TV. — Maddie Ziegler

In our society, defecation involves an
individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with
the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our
performances. Such activity also causes the individual to
disarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play, that is, to
drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in
face-to-face interaction. At the same time ic becomes difficult
for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to
enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a
reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them. — Erving Goffman

I love to talk to children about making mistakes. It's important that I tell them about how I don't get it right the first time. We live in such a perfectionist society, and they see so many finished products and polished performances. — Patricia MacLachlan

Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances. — Samuel Johnson

Generally speaking, individual performances don't win basketball games — John Wooden

The performances had to be live. When you play it back, you can see if the hands aren't really doing the right thing, and then the whole magic falls apart. — Oscar Isaac

Secularism and Religion are both all about your personal performance. The Gospel is the performance of another applied to you. — Timothy Keller

With that incredible voice that he [Alan Rickman] could play like a sort of wonderful instrument, like a cello or something. He played his voice, and he could be the most subtle of actors. And he could also be quite a big actor. He could do the grandiose performances as well. — Helen Mirren

Emma, you and your poetry, me and my acting--what are we trying to do? We can't top this city. We poor would-be artists can't compete with or improve on the rich density of human experience on any random, average, slow summer night in New York--who are we trying to kid? In the overheard conversation in the elevator, in the five minutes of talk the panhandler gives you before hitting you for the handout, in the brief give-and-take when you are going out and the cleaning lady is coming in--there are the real stories, incredible, heartbreaking and ridiculous, there are the command performances, the Great American Novels but forever unwritten, untoppable, and so beautifully unaware. — Wilton Barnhardt

I don't come to work as an actor. There are many directors who can direct without ever having acted and do a great job and connect with their actors and lead them to excellent performances without themselves having had an acting background. — Abdellatif Kechiche

I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible. — Edmund Burke

Audiences tend to get the performances they deserve ... — Gene Lees

Piano performances by Condoleezza Rice are better than Hitler's paintings. — Evgeni Kostitsyn

Actors' performances do not stand alone in any film, live action or whatever. — Andy Serkis

Working in network news is not a solitary pursuit; it is the ultimate 'team sport,' in which success is derived from the collective performances of remarkable people united in purpose and dedication. — Steve Capus