Improvisation Quotes

In short, we would discover, as we should already, that logic is in the eye of the logician. (For instance, here's an idea for theorists and logicians: if women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long? I leave further improvisation up to you.) ~ Gloria Steinem

Improvisation helps because you get what's on the page and you make it a little more palatable to your tongue. And that's the beauty of creating and being spontaneous. That's the way I love to work. ~ Taraji P. Henson

Can you tell me in one sentence what is meant by logotherapy?" he asked. "At least, what is the difference between psychoanalysis and logotherapy?" "Yes," I said, "but in the first place, can you tell me in one sentence what you think the essence of psychoanalysis is?" This was his answer: "During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell." Whereupon I immediately retorted with the following improvisation: "Now, in logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

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

Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body's breath, and the strings' wails and moans are echoes of the body's music. It is the body's vibrations which ripple from the fingers. And the mystery of the withheld theme, known to jazz musicians alone, is like the mystery of our secret life. We give to others only peripheral improvisations. ~ Anais Nin

Jazz is improvisation and syncopation, with resilience and flow, with earthy elegance, nuance and subtlety, with the integrity of individual expression within (usually) a group context, with true democracy in action. ~ Greg Thomas

When I began doing theatre in high school I saw that I could get laughs from people but I didn't really connect that to going on and becoming a comedian. I was interested in acting and while I was at Boston College I was part of an improv group, Mother's Fleabag, which had a long history and has been known as one of the best college improvisation groups in the U.S. ~ Amy Poehler

It took me forever, learning improvisation, because I had studied with Lee Strasberg - I dropped out of Chicago and went to his classes in New York for a couple of years, once or twice a week. What I didn't realize was I was learning directing because he wasn't all that good about acting, not for me. ~ Mike Nichols

We actually use a lot of improvisation on 'Transparent.' ~ Amy Landecker

I like films that are well-written and concise and with not a lot of room for improvisation. ~ Patrice Leconte

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

The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist. ~ Franz Liszt

Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page - rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and "guesses" at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words - just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us to simply improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we will still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its "inventors." All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are - accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I like to think that we've got a plan, so let's stick to it. That said, once we've stuck to it, we're allowed as much improvisation as anyone cares to indulge themselves in. ~ Guy Ritchie

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time. ~ Dave Brubeck

Lie down there on the sofa and see if I can put you to sleep.
He took up his violin fom the corner, and as I stretched myself out he began to play some low, dreamy, melodious air - his own no doubt, for he had a remarkable gift for improvisation. I have a vague remembrance of his gaunt limbs, his earnest face and the rise and fall of his bow. Then I seemed to be floated peacefully away upon a soft sea of sound until I found myself in dreamland, with the sweet face of Mary Morstan looking down upon me. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Anything I do, I learn about first. I am not in favour of improvisation; I believe in work and in learning ~ Ferreira Gullar

I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation. Someone once wrote that the sound of surprise is jazz, and if there's any one thing that we must try to get used to in this world, it's surprise and the unexpected. Truly, we are living in world where the only thing that's constant is change. ~ Warren G. Bennis

What all my years in improvisation taught is that - if you're going to grow as a performer - you have to try some new things. You've got to be willing to take a few risks. ~ Jack McBrayer

After a noticeable silence, he'd recently published a book of technically baffling poems, with line breaks so arbitrary and frequent as to be useless, arrhythmic. On the page they look like some of Charles Bukowski's skinny, chatty, muttering-stuttering antiverses. Impossibly, Mark's words make music, the faraway strains of an irresistible jazz. It's plain to any reader, within a few lines - well, go read the poems and see, Marcus Ahearn traffics with the ineffable. He makes the mind of the speaker present, in that here-and-now where the reader actually reads - that place. Such a rare thing. Samuel Beckett. Jean Follain, Ionesco - the composer Billy Strayhorn. Mark calls his process "psychic improvisation" and referred me to the painter Paul Klee; the term was Klee's. "You just get out a pen and a notebook and let your mind go long," he told me. ~ Denis Johnson

You've got to have fun playing. It bothers me when players don't seem to be enjoying themselves, even when they play an incredible improvisation. ~ Rufus Reid

Improvisation is almost like the retarded cousin in the comedy world. We've been trying forever to get improvisation on TV. It's just like stand-up. It's best when it's just left alone. It doesn't translate always on TV. It's best live. ~ Amy Poehler

That, as my cousin Nord would say, is where my improvised lie falls apart. ~ Eoin Colfer

Lying is manipulation. I prefer to call what I did 'improvisation in times of desperation. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

All the decisive blows are struck left-handed. ~ Walter Benjamin

You know, when cameras are rolling, improvisation doesn't feel natural. The pressure is too great. You're on a time schedule. You've got 60 crewmen. ~ Albert Brooks

I hope it might help players have confidence in our own ways, and not to be afraid of them, as Bernstein showed - things like hoe-downs, fiddle songs, and the art of improvisation, and the New Orleans funeral tradition, and call-and-response church singing, and the fact that the blues run through everything. And in our relationship to European music, in that we don't have to imitate it, it's a part of us, inseparable. ~ Wynton Marsalis

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

Finding your ensemble is a crucial step toward finding joy. When you help draw out and support other members of your ensemble, they are proud to lift you up in return. Support allows us to take risks. Raise everyone up. Let others help you. It is impossible to discover the full extent of yourself by yourself. ~ Amy Lisewski

Within the context of Western music, jazz has always contained certain radical or revolutionary aspects. These are: improvisation, collective composition and individuality or the personal sound (based on amazing variations in sonority, timbre and pitch). ~ Michael Snow

I am when i act with spontaneity, improvisation on a planned life. ~ Alain Bremond-Torrent

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

Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation
experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way ~ Paul Theroux

I never did improv professionally, but that was certainly in my training as an actor. I like it. ~ Steve Buscemi

If you go back to the roots of jazz, it was all about COLLECTIVE improvisation. ~ Henry Threadgill

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

Preparing to improvise is at a level commensurate with mastering the structure in a European classical piece. Another way to define improvisation is spontaneous melody. In order to improvise, a player first needs to have memorized and analyzed the harmonic structure of so many pieces. ~ Jimmy Heath

People's association with improvisation means one person playing an endless stream of notes over something, and it doesn't have to be. ~ Jon Brion

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

Undeniably, the audience for improvisation, good or bad, active or passive, sympathetic or hostile, has a power that no other audience has. It can affect the creation of that which is being witnessed. And perhaps because of that possibility the audience for improvisation has a degree of intimacy with the music that is not achieved in any other situation. ~ Derek Bailey

They are approaching now a lengthy brick improvisation, a Victorian paraphrase of what once, long ago, resulted in Gothic cathedrals - but which, in its own time, arose not from any need to climb through the fashioning of suitable confusions toward any apical God, but more in a derangement of aim, a doubt as to the God's actual locus (or, in some, as to its very existence), out of a cruel network of sensuous moments that could not be transcended and so bent the intentions of the builders not on any zenith, but back to fright, to simple escape, in whatever direction, from what the industrial smoke, street excrement, windowless warrens, shrugging leather forests of drive belts, flowing and patient shadow states of the rats and flies, were saying about the chances for mercy that year. ~ Thomas Pynchon

When I got a call to do the voice of Johnny in an episode of 'American Dad' titled 'I Can't Stan You,' it was a great opportunity to be a part of a really funny cutting-edge show on television. I really got into the character, and I was able to do some improvisation, which allowed me to mix in part of my personality into the script. ~ Paul Butcher

Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next. ~ Bobby McFerrin

Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway. ~ Emma Thompson

Sometimes it depends on the actor or the actress. Sometimes they demand a lot of rehearsals. Sometimes they don't. Making movies is not like making a play, so I guess you can leave some of the work for improvisation when they do the work. ~ Alejandro Amenabar

I've been fortunate to work with good directors who understand improvisation and understand the way comedians work. Luke Basan let me do my thing like do what you feel and take the character to another level. Quentin Tarrantino was more of an acting coach. He can teach you beats and then hell say go with it but give this feeling. So I've been fortunate to work with good, seasoned directors. ~ Chris Tucker

I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work. ~ Vincente Minnelli

All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room. ~ Martin Short

Improvisation has to do with exploring something like two brothers in a room together. You find out things about situations by discovering the things that they aren't saying. It's a way to explore scenes. Sometimes it's more useful than others, but it's always there to see if there's anything that you might improve. ~ Mike Nichols

Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a particular point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to have that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.

On the other hand, a person who takes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as is required, to fake the context as well. This freedom from the constraints to which the liar must submit does not necessarily mean, of course, that his task is easier than the task of the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilized in lying. It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the 'bullshit artist'. ~ Harry G. Frankfurt

Our lives are a sequence of things. When we're alive, they're continuing, just as my words now are an improvisation. So the idea of 30 years is actually quite nebulous. It's impossible to encapsulate it. All you can do is go: 'what next?' ~ Simon McBurney

As a director and an actor, I encourage improvisation but in character and in the moment of what it is. ~ Billy Crystal

Milch had a bigger cast, a bigger set (on the Melody Ranch studio, where Gene Autry had filmed very different Westerns decades earlier), and more creative freedom than he'd ever had before. There were no advertisers to answer to, and HBO was far more hands-off than the executives at NBC or ABC had been. And as a result, there was even less pretense of planning than there had been on NYPD Blue, and more improvisation. There were scripts for the first four episodes of Season 1, and after that, most of the series was written on the fly, with the cast and crew often not learning what they would be doing until the day before (if that). As Jody Worth recalls, the Deadwood writers would gather each morning for a long conversation: "We would talk about where we were going in the episode, and a lot of talk that had nothing to do with anything, a lot of Professor Milch talk, all over the map talk, which I enjoyed." Out of those daily conversations came the decisions on what scenes to write that day, to be filmed the day after. There was no system to it, no order, and the actors would be given scenes completely out of context from the rest of the episode. ~ Alan Sepinwall

With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive. ~ Carrie Brownstein

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

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

The first rule of improvisation is AGREE. Always agree and SAY YES. When you're improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created. So if we're improvising and I say, 'Freeze, I have a gun,' and you say, 'That's not a gun. It's your finger. You're pointing your finger at me,' our improvised scene has ground to a halt. But if I say, 'Freeze, I have a gun!' and you say, 'The gun I gave you for Christmas! You bastard!' then we have started a scene because we have AGREED that my finger is in fact a Christmas gun. ~ Tina Fey

Hendrix was back there with a few of the others who were like my training wheels ... hearing him as a teenager taught me to look at the guitar in a different way - and how to tap into that thing inside of me that was already leaning toward improvisation. You learn other players' licks at first; then you take off the training wheels and start using the licks as building blocks to make your own thing. That's how influences work. somewhere in whatever I do, there's a little bit of Hendrix - plus about a hundred others ~ Junior Brown

I love improvisation. It's quite exciting. ~ Tcheky Karyo

My father was king of the guidebooks and our holidays were always planned, taking us from a great gallery to an ace cafe to a beautiful view. And as an actor, I loathe improvisation because there's no structure and no one knows what's going on. ~ Olivia Williams

Take opportunities to initiate ideas and action as often as you stand ready to offer support for them. ~ Amy Lisewski

I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground. ~ John McLaughlin

Improvisation is about finding the best joke or the silliest way to get something across. Improvising conflict is always fun because you can just go for it. ~ Ed Helms

I am not a fan of improvisation, because it bores me. Working off a tight scenario gives you the confidence and ability to - why don't we change this a little bit and bring it back to the script. You always discover things while shooting. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn

In 1968 I ran into Steve Lacy on the street in Rome. I took out my pocket tape recorder and asked him to describe in fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation. He answered: "In fifteen seconds the difference between composition and improvisation is that in composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in fifteen seconds, while in improvisation you have fifteen seconds." His answer lasted exactly fifteen seconds. ~ Frederic Rzewski

Thorny compositions that sound as if female teen punkers the Shaggs received doctorates in the music of 12-tone composer Alban Berg, and then rewrote their Philosophy of the World ... Carefully notated structures and interplay morph effortlessly into free improvisation that is intelligent and expressive, but never self-indulgent. Also featuring intense lyrics sung with their clear and melodic voices, the two women make transcendent chamber music outside of any genre. ~ Elliott Sharp

Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation. ~ Nicolas Cage

I know all about improvisation and the free-form that mirrors the chaos of our time, but I do like to feel that the playwright has done some work before I got there. ~ Jean Kerr

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

Baseball players practice, runners practice, so how can you practice being funny? You get up onstage. You train as an improviser, playing make-believe, using the vernacular of improvisation, saying 'yes and' to other people's ideas, making statements. ~ Ali Farahnakian

Improvisation has never been my strong point. ~ Scarlett Johansson

In some ways, jazz is the most precise of art forms and the loosest in the sense that it's all about improvisation, but the musicianship required is kind of insane. To actually play with real jazz musicians is a different level of musicianship that almost has no equal in any other form of music in the world. ~ Damien Chazelle

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

I may be prejudiced, but I believe that jazz music has the strongest healing potential, and it's not just because I play it and love it so much. I feel that it's the improvisation in jazz that makes it so strong as a healing tool, what each individual gives to a tune from their heart and their soul when they take a solo. It's all spontaneous, and it's all love, and from the heart. ~ Horace Silver

In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize. ~ Gore Vidal

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

There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book. ~ Carson McCullers

To create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation. ~ Harvey Keitel

I feel there has to be a certain amount of improvisation as I'm writing, which means any idea or any commitment to a project is risky. It involves time; it involves gathering of material, and sometimes it just doesn't work. Sometimes it does. As I'm starting out on a project, I can't tell if it will click or not. ~ Joanna Scott

Successful improvisation is mostly a matter of taking your thoughts out of the equation, because thinking can keep the magic from happening. You have to be open enough to let the magic happen, instead of trying to make it happen because magic is never made. ~ Jimmy Herring

You know what your problem is, Sasha?" Rex said. "You always want to have every little detail worked out in advance. You've got to leave some room for improvisation." "My concern, sir, is that you've given such a wide berth to improvisation that you've left no room for planning." "You ~ Robert Kroese

Most of my music is improvisation, and composition is improvisation. Even if I have a score, it is improvisation. ~ Yoshi Wada

You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it! ~ Art Tatum

The dark, uncontrolled, primordial part of a person informs them that they are alive. Living free entails accepting a slew of wildness. All wild animals act by instinct. Human instinct and intuitive thought allow us to gain insights and new beliefs, which human rationalization confirms. Logic and intuition work well together, if both sources of mental visualization are drawn from when most apropos. Planning carefully should never replace the spirit for improvisation. Acting recklessly is no substitute for measured evaluation. Nonetheless, a dash of craziness makes most people more endearing than the calculating banker whose ledger driven life causes them to see life in terms of money pouches. Letting go of all conceptions of what is, and dreaming what could be, is a form of delusion. Knowing the difference between fantasy and reality does not mean that a person should disdain imaginative acts. I need to recognize when it is time to stop woolgathering and come back down to reality and work in the pebbly bedrock of the here and now. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

As any jazz musician knows, it takes flexibility and adaptability for improvisation to create beauty. ~ Doc Childre

For me anyway, until I was exposed to doing improvisation and walking onto a stage without any script, I would have never felt comfortable enough to walk into a room with someone like Larry David and audition. ~ Cheryl Hines

I don't understand why people don't use improvisation, especially in comedy films, but also, for me, you get more naturalism, and that's why I like the naturalistic performances and strange rhythms and the way that people genuinely interact captured rather than sort of very mannered performances. ~ Alice Lowe

Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders. ~ Edward Abbey

Still less, despite appearances, will it have been a collection of three "essays" whose itinerary it would be time, after the fact, to recognize; whose continuity and underlying laws could now be pointed out; indeed, whose overall concept or meaning could at last, with all the insistence required on such occasions, be squarely set forth. I will not feign, according to the code, either premeditation or improvisation. These texts are assembled otherwise; it is not my intention here to present them. ~ Jacques Derrida

Improvisation is a great mystery. You play something, and you play an answer to it. Then you play something to wrap it up. Nothing is going through your mind; you're not thinking of anything. Every now and then you surprise yourself. Where did that come from? ~ Jimmy Knepper

I started improvisation at age nine, and I loved it so much I stuck with it. As a by-product, acting was just something I was lucky enough to fall into. ~ Cassie Steele

Successful startups are just like jazz bands, masters of improvisation marching to syncopated beats ~ Mark Anthony Peterson

Improvisation is the expression of the accumulated yearnings, dreams, and wisdom of the soul. ~ Yehudi Menuhin

Everyone asks me if piano had helped me in football. I guess improvisation and creativity helps on the field, but that's a reach. The two skills are just so different. And, by the way, I get more nervous playing piano. ~ Joey Harrington

I become exaggerated, and loud, and obnoxious, and full of the spirit of improvisation. That's one of the weird things about performing, I think that any performer will say the same thing when you're on stage in front of a crowd there's a certain moment when you kind of click into a trance-like state and you just kind of go with it. I love getting into that mode. It's transcendental. ~ Wayne White

But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience. ~ Romare Bearden

I love improvisation. ~ Nora Dunn

I want the music to be heard as close to when I made it, as much as possible. I don't want to get into some "future of the music industry" thing, or where I stand on digital this or that, but I think it's ridiculous that a lot of people in the industry plan so far ahead that it makes a lot of improvisation impossible and makes a lot of people's expectations fixed and not fluid. ~ Bradford Cox

Life is improvisation. ~ Tina Fey

I'm very interested in the improvisation because one of the things I do is to help train scientists to communicate in a better way and more personal way when they're making a presentation, and I use improvisation to do that. ~ Alan Alda