Performer Quotes

I don't like people who use the press to advance themselves in a way that they haven't earned as an actor, performer or director.

My primary instinct as an actor is not the big transformation. It's thrilling if a performer can do that well, but that's not me. Often with actors, it's a case of witnessing a big party piece but wondering afterwards, where's the substance?

A well-rounded performer will listen to all kinds of music. I like classical, Middle Eastern, and rock a lot.

I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.

Fans are what make a performer and I've always taken them seriously.

Throughout my whole life, as a performer, I've never played with a band. I've always played alone, so I was never required to stay in rhythm or anything. So it was a real different experience for me to start playing with a band. There were so many basic things for me to learn.

I'm a total performer.

For the past few years, I was the more visible Asian performer, and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.

As a member of the audience I don't like it that I can't see what's going on in the eyes and in the face and in the most subtle responses of a performer when I'm more than a few rows back. I find it very frustrating.

At times as a performer they segregated us in some of theatres.

And at the same time, you are of course a performer, but it's very important that you understand that your role as a performer is to get the best performance from those wonderful colleagues that you have the chance to work with.

Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet, as well as one of the wealthiest, but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah, fashion merchandising, adoption melodramas, the gym, and ill-starred horseback riding to study art.

You put yourself on the line as a performer, and when people reject you, it's a personal rejection.

But as a writer and performer, I want to get paid for what I do.

What is a good performance? It lies in the hands and head of a performer... the shortest way between two people is not a straight line.

I know I'm a strong performer. I'm not an evolved musician.

If it's total freedom, I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer, with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play.

First you have to spread on the rust performer, then you add a coat of protective enamel, and then you spray on the satin finish so you look good.

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music, and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no, like, 'I'll be the rock star, you be the adulating fan.'

When you have a performer as talented as Bill Murray or as Harold, that can write as well as they can perform, you can do a final draft on the set if you think of it that way.

It is not a mystical thing, however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes.

The more accountable I can make you, the easier it is for you to show you're a great performer.

Right now, my career is in three directions: as a performer, as an arranger, as an author - and I don't give any one of them true precedent, or true top marks, as opposed to the other two.

I'm still learnin'. I pick up something from every performer I watch.

I'm a live performer and I love playing live.

The crushing, pitiful, and frequently just plain risible pathos of an unsuccessful actor/performer's life is well charted.

I don't want to be the oldest performer in captivity... I don't want to look like a little old man dancing out there.

I'm a performer. We don't retire.

I believe it is my duty as a performer to raise issues in the world of things we're afraid to look at.

It is still an open question, however, as to what extent exposure really injures a performer.