Summerscales Performing Quotes

Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. After the shows, however, I experienced long hours of elation or misery depending on how the show went, because doing comedy alone onstage is the ego's last stand. ~ Steve Martin

Reading is a very different thing than performing. In fact, one of the things I think that doesn't work in books on tape is if the person doing the reading "acts" too much; it becomes irritating to you listening to it. ~ Salman Rushdie

Rock 'n' roll and playing live is very addictive. But you have to really be careful, because you don't want to do it all the time. It's like when you are young and you think if you are not having sex you're wasting your time. But as you get older you realise everything has its place. It's the same thing with performing ... Performing is a great thing to do but you don't want to have to be doing it every night. ~ Mick Jagger

I want you to see me naked and performing one or two dozen mad acts, which will take me less than half an hour, because if you have seen them with your own eyes, you can safely swear to any others you might wish to add. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I think I get certain pleasure from writing what I'm performing. ~ Ellie Kemper

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

I think of myself as unconventional, I guess. I maybe always had a problem with authority, like a stubbornness about what's expected - despite wanting to get some recognition through performing - but also not always wanting to do the expected thing. ~ Kim Gordon

Comedy is serious - deadly serious. Never, never try to be funny! The actors must be serious. Only the situation must be absurd. Funny is in the writing, not in the performing. If the situation isn't absurd, no amount of joke will help. ~ Mel Brooks

My songs are very personal, which means they are fantastically therapeutic to write, but performing them night after night is emotionally draining. ~ Laura Mvula

That's the thing about stage: It's something you can't find anywhere else. It's a two-and-a-half, three-hour experience, and it's a real relationship. You're sending out energy from the stage, but the audience is giving you back so much also, so that's also lifting you and pushing you forward as you're performing and giving you so much energy. You can't find it anywhere else, and that's why people get addicted to being on stage, and when they're not on stage are kind of looking for that and constantly searching for it. ~ Aaron Tveit

In an age of Perfect Virtue, the worthy are not honored; the talented are not employed. Rulers are like the high branches of a tree; the people, like the deer of the fields. They do what is right, but they do not know that this is righteousness. They love one another, but they do not know that this is benevolence. They are truehearted but do not know that this is loyalty. They are trustworthy but do not know that this is good faith. They wriggle around like insects, performing services for one another, but do not know that they are being kind. Therefore they move without leaving any trail behind, act without leaving any memory of their deeds. ~ Zhuangzi

The kind of people claiming to be in
communication with God today ... they are enough to drive a real Christian crazy! And how about these evangelical types, performing miracles for money? Oh, there's big bucks in interpreting the gospel for idiots-or in having idiots interpret the gospel for you ~ John Irving

I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and was a very competitive (and stressed out!) gymnast before getting into entertainment, but it was never the actual gymnastics that was my true love. I loved the performing aspect of it all. ~ Rachele Brooke Smith

Don't forget there are two sides to performing. Finding the truth, but you also have to be transparent enough for the audience to see it. How many times have you seen a performance and thought: 'Well, it seems to be meaning a great deal to you but it ain't coming across to me?' It is to be shared. ~ John Hurt

I love performing, and I love being in front of people. I love the pressure you get and the pleasure performing brings. ~ Leo Howard

A person who is interrupted while performing a task takes 50% more time to complete it and make 50% more errors. ~ David Brooks

When I act, I feel like I am a color in someone else's painting - I can be the best blue that there is, but I'm still only part of their entire picture - but, with music, when I am performing with Reserved For Rondee, I am the painter, you know? ~ Billy Magnussen

That one has to be playing in order to be playing a game seems equally implausible. When professional athletes are performing in assigned games for wages, although they are certainly playing games, we are not at all inclined to conclude from that fact that they are without qualification playing. For we think of professional athletes as working when they play their games and as playing when they go home from work to romp with their children. ~ Bernard Suits

I found that I could not climb my way up to God in a blaze of doing and performing. Rather, I had to descend into the depths of myself and find God there in the darkness of troubled waters. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

I love performing. I shall perform until the day I die. ~ Josephine Baker

I'm not one of these actresses like, 'Okay, where's the camera? Is it here? Is it here?' I don't even ask the questions because I don't really want to know. I like not performing for a camera but giving it my best every single time whether you're close or whether you're far. ~ Halle Berry

Because of this, I feel I am performing a work of love, not of hostility. I do not aim to accuse the contemporary world and monasticism but to enrich the world with the values that monasticism can and should contribute to it. Our world needs monks who are different from itself. Please God, this essay will help them to sing more clearly and beautifully the part they have to sing in the immense symphony of the present time.
To Love Fasting: The Monastic Experience
(prologue) ~ Adalbert De Vogue

Most of my career has been about standing on a stage performing music to an audience, and once the show is over, they go home and I go on to the next show. ~ Greg Lake

You couldn't really tell people you weren't out performing your civic duties because you were too busy raising the dead. ~ Lish McBride

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo
Leap to these arms, untalk'd of and unseen.
Lovers can see to do their amorous rites
By their own beauties; or, if love be blind,
It best agrees with night. Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black,
And learn me how to lose a winning match,
Play'd for a pair of stainless maidenhoods:
Hood my unmann'd blood, bating in my cheeks,
With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold,
Think true love acted simple modesty.
Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
O, I have bought the mansion of a love,
But not possess'd it, and, though I am sold,
Not yet enjoy'd: so tedious is this day
As is the night before some festival
To an impatient child that hath new robes
And may not wear them. O, here comes my nurse,
And she b ~ William Shakespeare

I liked performing, but not the struggle. ~ Irene Cara

Performing in front of my fans is what I love to do and I hope I get to do it forever. ~ Easton Corbin

Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward. ~ Wendy Webb

Our mind is like a field, and performing actions is like sowing seeds in that field. ~ Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home. ~ Yo-Yo Ma