Barbara Walters Quotes

With comedy, I like to not rehearse and just have fun with it, because I think being spontaneous is the best thing for a comedy, in my opinion.

Sometimes we had to improvise. I hate to improvise because I felt like I couldn't find words.

My whole act is off the top of my head.

I'm a chronic ad-libber. So whoever hires me, often to their chagrin, should know that I will be talking a bunch of smack.

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

On Disney, we stick to the script. But you go to the 'Grown Ups set' and it's completely different. Same thing with Tyler Perry - it's nothing but ad-libbing.

I've never formally trained in acting, so I'm very instinctual and visceral with decisions.

I don't know why people think I'm this ad-lib dude.

I never freestyle. I always give a written verse cause I just don't wanna go out like that.

I never have fixed subjects that I discuss on stage. I never go on with any particular subjects in mind.

I freestyle everything.

When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. "I can't do this," I said. "I don't know what to say." "Say anything," he said. "You can't make a mistake when you improvise." "What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?" "You can't," he said. "It's like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another." In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life.

Wit, like poetry, is insusceptible of being constructed upon rules founded merely in reason. Like faith, it exists independent of reason, and sometimes in hostility to it.

To work from nature is to improvise.

If somebody says, "Oh, we're going to improvise!," I'm like, Oh, get me out of here.

As a rapper, I don't freestyle. I used to freestyle when I used to get drunk, and it didn't matter.

Never write down your speeches beforehand; if you do, you may perhaps be a good declaimer, but will never be a debater.

I have not made many conscious efforts to "re-imagine" songs. I just let them happen the way they're going to happen.

There's a difference between ad-libbing and improvising. And there's a difference between not knowing what to do and just saying something. Or making choices as an actor. As a writer also, as a person who's making a film, as a cameraman, everything is a choice. And it seems to me I don't really have to direct anyone or write down that somebody's getting drunk; all I have to do is say that there's a bottle there and put a bottle there and then they're going to get drunk.

I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.

There’s no preparation for poetry.

I'm not one to dwell on rehearsal or preparation. I like to just go out and do it. Of course, that doesn't mean actors are free to do whatever they like, they're always being directed.

I love improv-ing, you know, from very early on when I started acting the school that I went to and everything was very big on ad-libbing and improv-ing and messing things up, so I feel very comfortable doing stuff like that.

One take, so you better be ready and you better be good. One take and that was it. It was something that was spontaneous. Both Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason was like that as well.

I need to be spontaneous sometimes. Sometimes I find that the little detail or nuance that you add to it that's based on what's happening at the time that's not very rehearsed often ends up feeling like the funniest thing.