Lewis Black Quotes

I do think of my reader, or listener, really, more often, if I give a lecture, for example, and I know that I'm talking to these people; I enjoy sort of preening them a bit. But it's a matter of decorum, basically.

You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!

We tend to assume that we have a baseline of speech that's going to be normal in all contexts, but the truth is, we all change our ways of speaking depending on who we're talking to. And so I think it's kind of a gesture of politeness to the people you're speaking to to try to say something in their own idiom.

If you talk in a way that is too dissimilar to the character, when people are showing up to see you talk about the show, often it seems like it's jarring to them.

I pride myself on the energy I put on stage.

I love playing in the spotlight... I feel like that's motivation for everyone.

I like to perform in front of an audience.

Earlier in my career, I just wanted to be an entertainer.

I want to, when I say things on TV, to talk to the people in English.

As a presenter, you have to speak with artificial energy and enthusiasm.

I do pauses, pauses work for me

I always take the audience into account.

I like entertaining people. I like being on stage. I like being in the life. This is what I do. This is the only thing I know how to do besides rob people and fight. Even when I was robbing people, I was entertaining them. But that's just what I love doing.

When you are on stage you are having an affair with three thousand people.

When you are on stage in front of an audience, you want to engage the entire crowd. If a thousand people are in the theater, you need to dance a thousand different ways, not one-thousandth of a way.

The most important thing to remember is you must know your audience.

Well, it's really gratifying to me to have a stage and some bright lights and a microphone. They're tools and opportunities, and to be able to just pull somebody up on stage with me and point at them is a great feeling.

You may use different sorts of sentences and illustrations before different sorts of audiences, but you don't -- if you are wise -- talk down to any audience.

I think if you ask the audience to like you, it's all over.

I can usually get the right connection with the crowd and I don't have to be jumping off ladders.

I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me.

So I am hoping my second outing to your wonderful university turns out differently, because it would be highly embarrassing if I said, “Good evening Yaleites” or “Yalers”, or whatever you guys are called, and got stuck at Yaaaaa…. That wouldn’t make for much of a speech.

I would advise you to keep your overhead down; avoid a major drug habit; play everyday, and take it front of other people. They need to hear it, and you need them to hear it.

I've been in love with audiences all my life, and I've tried to please. I hope I did.

Donald Trump has been saying that I think for as long as I've been listening to him of late, and that's what he's going to do.