Roger McGough Quotes

I sing songs that I have lived or I write them because I have lived them. I think the believability factor is key.

So we had life, death, illness, everything - every emotional involvement we had, we experienced. And I think that made what we had to do on stage, stronger. We got very much involved in what we were doing.

You've got a song you're singing from your gut, you want that audience to feel it in their gut. And you've got to make them think that you're one of them sitting out there with them too. They've got to be able to relate to what you're doing.

The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my God, this song is totally about me.'

Music is emotional. Your job is to make people feel something. The best way to do that is to sing and speak from something they've personally been through. That's where I write from.

Songs, especially lyrics, have always been really important to me.

I love to entertain, I love to make people laugh, cry, and move them, perhaps moving them in their lives.

The ability to make somebody feel something: that's art. However you look at it, whether you're an author, a painter, a singer, a rapper, a spoken-word artist - art.

Acting is all about truth and honesty, and the sensitivity that's capable of transporting you.

I feel like I have some stuff that matches 'Fight Song,' not in necessarily the message exactly but in the emotion and honesty.

For a writer, they say write what you know. As a performer, you find it in yourself, in your heart. You relate to the character. You try to live it, try to have it be real for you.

If my performance touches someone or helps someone understand themselves a little better or gives them a laugh, I feel like I gave them something. I want to touch people's lives and bring them along with me.

I think good entertainment makes you feel something... it can be a variety of different feelings.

The actor already comes with emotions to the scene: fear, the fear of being in front of the camera. It is this fear that spurs the emotion of the scene. I too am afraid; I don't know exactly what I am searching for. On the set, we are all participating in this fear together.

I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs.

I want to move people the way Edith Piaf did.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.

I really love to set things in places that are real to me.

I saw a Shakespeare play when I was - I guess I was in junior high. And I just fell in love with the theater because, for me, it was a combination of big ideas and feeling.

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.

I think that's something that people feel that I do really well; I don't mind it, because ultimately I think the characters I play move people, and who wouldn't want to move people?

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

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

Emotional honesty transcends reality; it's what allows disbelief to be suspended and yet what makes a story stay true.

Sometimes I would write something that was so private, people would say, 'Make it more universal.' I never liked that idea. I always thought the more personal a song was, the more people would want to hear it.