Performance Quotations

It's easy listening to a record, but a live performance is so personal and real.

The great lesson in theatre is that you live the story every night, and that is a wonderful vehicle for getting to the richest places in a performance or investing a character with the richest life.

My first impression when I made it through was 'Good, because I'm going to prove to you that I deserve to be here', because they told me that sometimes I lack confidence in my performance and sometimes I'm not as consistent as they'd like me to be.

I performed adequately at school, but in comparison to my older brother, who set the record for the highest cumulative average for our high school, my performance was decidedly mediocre.

When I was about six or seven, I did this character reenactment performance where I read a monologue from 'Peter Pan.' I got into a complete Peter Pan outfit and did a little paragraph from the script - and I ended up winning an award for it.

A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures.

I don't speak English, so I'll just have to win the trust and confidence of the fans with my performance on the field.

Meryl Streep is my favorite actor. She is so classy and a brilliant actress. Her performance in 'Sophie's Choice' just kills me.

Performance is always something that will be a part of my career.

It's the job of any business owner to be clear about the company's nonnegotiable core values. They're the riverbanks that help guide us as we refine and improve on performance and excellence. A lack of riverbanks creates estuaries and cloudy waters that are confusing to navigate. I want a crystal-clear, swiftly flowing stream.

I was excited to play Lil' Kim and I wanted to do the role justice. I worked really hard on that role, whether it was performing the rhymes, studying the dialect, her swagger and her stage performances. I wanted people to see my range and stretch my wings as an actress.

Every medium has its advantages and weaknesses and there are many things I can put down on paper that I might not be able to put into film or into a stage performance. In each form, one can communicate powerfully in different ways.

I always wanted to experience what performance would be like without the fourth wall, so I formed a company in Australia, and we did avant-garde theater, playing with gender norms, conversations about race - we just had a box of issues that we wanted to subvert with our stories, with dance.

Being on film is forever. Television, as well, just lives on and on and on, which is really exciting. But then with theater, it's like an experience. You have to be there that one special night that was like that to see that one performance that was really remarkable. It's more intimate as well. So I like them both.

It's a good note for any young hopeful in this business to take: study up and make sure you are informed at all times because knowing how to anticipate someone's subtle nuances in a performance will only elevate your own art!

Imagine spending seven years at MIT and research laboratories, only to find out that you're a performance artist.

I consider that my best performance ever was as Peer Gynt.

I've always believed acting is an improvisational art form, even when not a single line is changed. I mean, the behavior should always be improvised. My favorite moments in any performance are when I'm just along for the ride; when I'm surprising myself. I know when I'm done and I think to myself, 'Gee, I didn't see that coming,' I've done well.

Strangely, when I was a kid, my first acting job, at 5 years old, was a performance of 'The Three Little Pigs.' They cast me as the Big Bad Wolf.

There's an axiom I live by: 'There is no art without politics.' You either choose to engage it, or you choose political apathy. This ties in with ideas around real-time performance and feedback.

No translation can possibly be perfect. Every production and every performance is a different path up the mountain, and nobody ever makes it all the way to the summit.

It still amazes me how many musicians aren't really interested in engaging with their audience at all. Alfred Brendel, a pianist for whom I have the greatest respect, has described performance as a sacred communion between the artist and the composer. But what about the audience? Music is communication, a two-way street.

County government can be simplified greatly by reorganizing and consolidating some of the offices, making others appointive, and reducing salaries in keeping with the salaries paid by private business for the performance of similar duties.

No one wants one language. There are applications when it's appropriate to write something in C rather than in Java. If you want to write something where performance is much more important than extensibility, then you might want to choose C rather than Java.

A studio is like a meditation room where music is created. And a live performance is the place where the creation of the studio is taken ahead. I love both.

I was always more interested in the ultimate live performance rather than the recording for its own sake. And, for the audience too, that thrill of - just being there.

I believe that poems are a score for performance by the reader, and that you become the speaking voice. You don't read or overhear the voice in the poem - you are the voice in the poem.

I think the biggest myth entrepreneurs have is that the growth and performance of their startups depends more on their entrepreneurial talent than on the businesses they choose.

Most of my ideas are based on the latest research on productivity, performance and mental mastery - that's why so many iconic companies bring me in to help them grow and win.

We all know business financial performance improves when more women are in senior levels of management and leadership.

In the movies, I loved Errol Flynn whether he was playing a soldier or a pirate. I dug pirates. In fact, my first exposure to live performances was when my paternal grandfather took me to a D'Oyly Carte performance of 'The Pirates of Penzance' which impresario Sol Hurok imported from London. I loved every minute of it.

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.

I grew up loving David Letterman and Pee-wee Herman, but as far as live performance comedy, all I knew were the Jerry Seinfeld-type comedians of the world, and that's what I thought live performance comedy was all about.

It's just a very different process from maybe working one or two days a week doing one or two scenes a day versus sustaining a performance over two hours or so eight times a week.

There's a difference between expanding someone's potential and expanding their actual performance. Performance may measure other things, whether one's culture supports education, other socio-economic factors.

My first performance was in AP Calculus when they forced me up into the front of the classroom and made me sing a song, which was really scary, but it was fun.

You'll never see a good performance out of me, in terms of a character, when the camera isn't rolling.

The thing about the performance part... starting with improv and standup, you're starting with yourself as the character, and I don't feel as much like, 'Oh, I'm a vessel for -' I feel like someone who calls themselves an actor is a vessel.

It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises-but only performance is reality.

I've been dancing since I was seven, but I never really developed a regimen until I was on Broadway and responsible for a professional performance every night.

The words we spoke and our entire punk performance aimed to express our disapproval of a specific political event: the patriarchs' support of Vladimir Putin, who has taken an authoritarian and anti-feminist course.

Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.

I feel really blessed when people start comparing me with Sachin, but I keep myself focused on my performance and not on such comparisons. I literally worship him, so I don't see too much in this comparison. No cricketer has been able to score one hundred centuries like Sachin.

There was a strange happening during a performance of Elgar's 'Sea Pictures' at a concert hall in Bermuda tonight, when the man playing the triangle disappeared.

There was very little drama and performance at my school, so I've never forgotten the people who did encourage me and I've thought whether it would be a good idea to even get in touch with them and just say thanks, because they really opened a door for me mentally and emotionally - that's really important.

The first dance performance I saw was Joffrey Ballet doing 'Billboards' to Prince.

If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?

Every performance is an opportunity to have something new or to learn something new.

Most corporations have human-resources processes that involve discussions with your manager, performance evaluations, calibrations for performance and potential succession planning.

I do not really know what is my interview and performance style.

The development of a political-economic framework to explore long-run institutional change occupied me during all of the 1980s and led to the publication of Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance in 1990.

Where I come from, if you weren't a drag queen or a radical thinker or a performance artist of some kind, you were the weirdo.

I'm very interested in heritage restoration, and I'm working with a group of people to create a number of academies and performance spaces to encourage native arts and crafts and to explore African history.

It is striking to see the magnitude of impact mentorship and tutoring can have on student performance and young lives.

I think it hurt my performance because I stopped being me. That won't ever happen again.

Historically, the mobile industry has been focused on the consumer, getting better performance and throughput to their devices.

I thought his performance was absolutely wonderful and had said so, but he seemed, as actors quite often are when they first see something, to be disappointed. I think he expected more from the film and himself.

The bottom line is that your performance is made in the editing room.

The casting of 'Slumdog Millionaire' is a dream. Anil Kapoor, as the sleazy TV host, diamonds winking in his earlobes, has never been better; the quietly understated Irrfan Khan turns in another bravura performance as the police inspector whose questioning brings out Jamal's story.

Over the years, I've realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I'm in an odd world where I make things and share them with people.

I feel like with every performance that I see, I get better because I've always thought - while I'm watching people perform - of what I would do.

A recording of a performance is a recording of a performance. It's not the performance.

My performance level has risen - and my anxiety-level has sky-rocketed.

Well, any time I'm preparing for a performance or even a rehearsal, it's as if in a way, like any other athletes, these are muscles that support the vocal cords which are just I believe cartilage. It demands a kind of constant warming up and a constant feeling of where is the voice today.

As a player, that's not your responsibility to comment and to give your opinion on another player. As a quarterback, I don't want another quarterback tweeting about my performance or judging me in that way.

Difficult times disrupt your conventional ways of thinking and push you to forge better habits of thought, performance and being.

As long as I give the best performance I can give, I know I can't do any more.

Any designer believes his gun is the best, and when its test performance is a bit less impressive compared to others, he feels bitterness and envy.

When there's no technical problems, if you did the right casting, and the scene is well written, the actor will give you a strong performance with his intuition right from the start.

That's the only way to do it. Just like an actor. You can get a great performance if you do a bunch of takes and edit it. You find the moments and string them together.

Our communications services revenue growth is being driven by continued strong top-line performance in data, Internet and international -- three of the fastest growing and most profitable areas within communications services.

For some artists the live performance is the chicken before the egg of writing or recording of repertoire. For other artists the writing or recording of repertoire is the chicken before the egg of live performance.

I don't try to try to judge people on performance in one short period of time.

If the goal is to build companies that maximize long-term equity value, then optimizing corporate performance in a way that Wall Street appreciates is obviously critical to that goal.

Usually in theater, the visual repeats the verbal. The visual dwindles into decoration. But I think with my eyes. For me, the visual is not an afterthought, not an illustration of the text. If it says the same thing as the words, why look? The visual must be so compelling that a deaf man would sit though the performance fascinated.

Music is about communication, and the chemistry between an audience and the orchestra is absolutely essential; the performance does not exist in a bubble.

I think it killed the performance on a lot of the systems in the Labs for years because everyone had their own copy of it, but it wasn't being shared, and so they wasted huge amounts of memory back when memory was expensive.

David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands.

There's a tendency, when you're directing yourself, not to give the performance as much care, because you feel like there's too much focus on yourself, or that all these people are just standing around setting everything up, waiting for you.

The team behind 'The Lego Movie' approached me. They wanted to do something extra special for the Academy Award performance of best song nominee 'Everything is Awesome.' They had seen my earlier version of a Lego Oscar statue, and I was happy to take on the challenge.

A video taped stage performance is just - you know, it's never gonna be the same as it is if you're sitting there live in the theatre.

I've done my coaching badges, I've got my Pro Licence, but I enjoy what I'm doing now. I'm also the elite performance director of the Welsh FA. The main thing for me was always Liverpool Football Club and my country, Wales - and I'm lucky enough to still be involved with both of them.

I try to give each performance my own soul, to bring a truth to my character. Hopefully, when I bring that much truth to a character, it resonates with somebody, and it sparks some kind of emotion in them.

Sexual performance problems, such as impotence and frigidity, are 70 to 90 percent changeable. But a homosexual who wants to be a heterosexual - that's close to unchangeable. And a transsexual - say a man who believes he's really a woman in a man's body - is completely unchangeable; you'd have to change the body to conform to the psyche.

I am certainly suffering from a modicum of performance anxiety.

There was a strong focus on performance and respect for people. And one of the points that my father always made was that with all the challenges and obstacles and barriers, the one thing you can control is your performance. And that is one thing I have tried to adhere to throughout my career.

Barbra Streisand developed overwhelming performance anxiety at the height of her career; for 27 years she refused to perform for the general public, appearing live only in private clubs and at charity events, where she presumably believed the pressure on her was less intense.

Well, I think In Love and War, which had a wonderful performance by Sandy, Sandra Bullock, who the authorities and, the supposed authorities, in cinema didn't want to know about.

On the field, aggression can sometimes be a positive emotion. It boosts performance and can lift your game. But over the years, I have learnt that restrained aggression is a better animal. That way, you will conserve your energy and won't spend yourself quickly.

I guess my interest in performance has evolved and changed many times over the years.

The same things we've done the past couple of seasons. We've worked on the engine and clutch. We'll try and pick up the performance and consistency of the car and go back out there.

I remember when I was a dancer and I had to do this performance and I was really nervous about it, and I happened at that moment to go see 'Flashdance.' I mean, it's silly, but I walked out of that movie going 'what a feeling!' I walked out with confidence.

I majored in musical theatre performance at college, then went through years of waiting tables and temping while looking for acting work.

I try to see interviewing as performance art, and just take it as it comes.

Not only do the majority of senior women executives have sports in their background, they recognize that the behaviors and techniques learned through sports are critical to motivating teams and improving performance in a corporate environment.

If you want to judge the performance of the Egyptian people by the standards of German or Chinese or American culture, then there is no room for judgment.

When I first came to New York City in 1967, I joined up with Richard Schechner's Performance Group - where we worked in the Performing Garage in SoHo.

I am thrilled beyond words that The Academy has recognized my performance in Steve McQueen's '12 Years a Slave,' and I am deeply proud to be in the company of my fellow nominees.

My main regret about my years in football was keeping my mouth shut like a little mouse, not daring to speak out because I was told you left the managers to get on with the job and that the chairman must never interfere with the manager's decisions or the performance of his team.

I knew I really made it when my dad saw me in London and after the performance he had no notes to me and just said 'You are doing your own thing and I am proud of you.'