Performing Artist Quotes & Sayings

Music is exciting and easy to enjoy, the rhythm and voice.
It does not need interpretation. That is why it is called the Universal Language. — Ellen J. Barrier

Believe it or not, most people think of me as a recording artist, but actually the way I think of myself and the way I earn my living is as a performing artist. — Helen Reddy

I purposefully try to make films in that grey area, where things are morally ambiguous. It's like life: good people do horrible things, and bad people do good things, and there's beauty in horror and horror in beauty. — Harmony Korine

You know you drank too much the night before when you wake up with crop circles in your pubes. — Doug Benson

If our education had included training to bear unpleasantness and to let the first shock pass until we could think more calmly, many an unbearable situation would become manageable, and many a nervous illness avoided. There is proverb expressing this. It says, trouble is a tunnel thorough which we pass and not a brick wall against which we must break our head. — Claire Weekes

You've got to show them that by expressing themselves creatively through singing, songwriting, and performing, they can be whoever they want to be . . . not someone who takes off her clothes on top of a pool table for beer, not someone who can be bought and sold, not some sexual object for a man's desire, but a strong, tough businesswoman and artist. — Meg Cabot

There are any number of models artists can use to profit off of their talent and artistry. It is not up to the state to protect them from competition. Musicians can obviously get paid for performing and having their music copied and "pirated" helps them in this respect by making them more well known, more popular. — Stephan Kinsella

Obviously, fans are the beginning and end for any artist. The minute your fans embrace you and accept you, you begin this ride of being in music and having a career doing something you love. You get to go be a kid and live out your dreams by performing music for fans who come out to your shows. — Luke Bryan

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity. — Oscar Wilde

Going from someone playing 15-people venues to performing at the Grammys, it was this giant leap and sort of showed me it was possible with what I wanted to do and the kind of music I wanted to write and artist I want to be to impact a lot of people. — Mary Lambert

His accent was absolutely delicious and I didn't mind talking to him for a little while. — Yolanda Olson

I'm also performing regularly in Southern California with two bands. As a solo artist doing acoustic sets and a member of the Jenerators, my rock n roll band that has been around for a long time now. — Bill Mumy

You can choose not to be a performing musician. You can choose to just be a recording artist. But then you run into the problem of trying to earn a living and balancing the time that you spend working on your creative efforts to just getting the bills paid. You can go off the grid and live in a cabin and make whatever art you want and also provide all the sustenance you need and not interact with anybody else. — Mirah

I am a performing artist; I perform admiration.
'Come with me', I want my poems to say. 'And do the same — Mary Oliver

We thus see the artist performing a dual function: first, furthering the integrity of the process of self-expression in the language of art; and secondly, protecting the organic continuity of art in relation to its own laws. For like any organic substance, art must always be in a state of flux, the tempo being slow or fast. But it must move. — Mark Rothko

I would advise dancers, musicians and others in the entertainment industry to take up yoga, as it clears the mind and creates a sense of balance and stillness which is important for any performing artist. — Emmanuel Jal

I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress. — Kara Walker

My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities. — Rosanne Cash

I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for. — Al Franken

I think that there is a purity aesthetic, like "I just make art because I'm an artist and I can't help it. I don't care what the critics say." But different mediums have a different relationship with the public. If you're in a performing medium it's hard not to place some weight on whether or not people come to your shows, or whether or not they're enjoying them. — Mirah

I could draw ideas. I remember writing a paper for a seminar class. I remember writing a paper about - and this is going to sound really sort of pretentious, but that's where my mind was at the time - how acting and the performing artist can really be like a Bodhisattva, how they can communicate ultimately an idea in a way that can move and shift things. And that was wonderful. I didn't know many classes where I could try and relate the thing that I really loved and wanted to do into an intellectual idea, and that happened to be one of them. — Jake Gyllenhaal

If you're an artist like a really, really long time, it stops being a performance. I'm not performing anymore. I reveal myself to the audience. I show you some of me. It's not a show no more. — Eddie Murphy

How wise should we be if, with joyful certainty, we accepted each unfolding of His will as a proof of His faithfulness and love! — Susannah Spurgeon

[T]ea, that uniquely English meal, that unnecessary collation at which no stimulants
neither alcohol nor meat
are served, that comforting repast of which to partake is as good as second childhood. — Angela Carter

I would have been a visual artist. When I was in high school, that was one of the things ... I had to make a decision what I was going to go to college for, and at the time, I also painted and sculpted. I got more attention for my performing, so I thought that was a better idea. — Josh Young

A strange, glazed expression came into his eyes and he staggered around the cabin looking for all the world like a zombie unwilling to take part in an experiment in advanced necromancy. — Lionel Fanthorpe

A professional entertainer who allows himself to become known as a singer of folk songs is bound to have trouble with his conscience provided, of course, that he possesses one. As a performing artist, he will pride himself on timing and other techniques designed to keep the audience in his control [ ... ] his respect for genuine folklore reminds him that these changes, and these techniques, may give the audience a false picture of folk music. — Sam Hinton

If one had to define one essential gift with which a dancer needs to be endowed, there might be a rush of answers. A beautiful body, grace of line, graciousness of spirit, joy in the work, ability to please, unswerving integrity, relentless ambition towards some abstract perfection. Certainly all these factors determine a dancer's character, and every element exists in some combination within the performing artist's presence. — Lincoln Kirstein

Not all, but too many of the best writers, composers, and artists of our time begin to be acclaimed only when they no longer have anything to say and take to performing instead of stating. — Clement Greenberg

An entertainer is someone who pleases others, and an artist tries to please himself. An artist is on a journey: they don't know where they're going, what is going to happen, but they know they are not there yet, and there is some continuity and growth. I think of myself as an entertainer: I'm a performing entertainer, I'm a stand-up comic. But there's an artist at work here, too. One who interprets his world through his own filter. — George Carlin

God cannot change for the better, for He is already perfect; and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse. — Arthur W. Pink

Traveling around is what I Like to Do. Me And my boy Arab we live on the road. Doing shows is what I love to do. I put my heart and soul on the track and I Love the response I get. Performing wit UNK? Mane daz a dream come true. He's one of my favorite artist and Inspirations. So when they said Soulja Boy you got a show wit UNK man. Im like Walk It Out UNK? LETS GO! — Soulja Boy

Obviously I've always loved singing and performing, but I fell in love with songwriting and then I enjoyed doing that for other people and getting coached. But then I kind of stumbled into the right group of people that really started to create some unique music for me and what I wanted to say, so then it made me want to be an artist. — Kacey Musgraves

and gestured. A number of students were taking notes, some — Robert B. Parker

The main difference between the art of the actor and all other arts is that every other [non-performing] artist may create whenever he is in the mood of inspiration. But the artist of the stage must be the master of his own inspiration, and must know how to call it forth at the hour announced on the posters of the theatre. This is the chief secret of our art. — Constantin Stanislavski

Exmoor and Dartmoor are sacred, magical places. You find a truer side of yourself there. — Dave Davies

The horse was panting, hanging its head. I hugged its head to my breast and saw that there were tears in its large eyes. I noticed a round black wound on its belly. "Why did not you tell me?" I whispered, crying. "My dearest, I did it for you," the horse said and became very small, like a wooden toy. I left him and felt wonderfully light and happy. — Bruno Schulz

The separation of religion from the practical affairs of society is a convenient doctrine for those who fear that social change would threaten of modify their own political and social self-interest. — William Stringfellow

I knew what I wanted to do, which was to become a recording artist, so I definitely felt like I had a calling. The performing part was the part that I wasn't sure about. — Ariel Pink

What matters is not the facts but how you discover and think about them. — Richard Dawkins