Ralph Vaughan Williams Quotes

Audiences are a wee bit more chatty in New York than in London.

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

I play for the audience's pleasure. What I expect from them is not important; it's what they expect from me.

I was in a band called Groove Solution. Because there was a groove crisis, and we solved it.

To this day, I adore classical music, and I'm very interested in opera, which I found out later my father was also extremely fond of.

Comedy, in my opinion, is best when it's in the gray, and you're kind of pushing people's thoughts that they sort of had but never vocalized. And I think a joke is not good if someone says something, and immediately people are clapping because they're like, 'Yes! That is how I feel as well!'

I try to do a lot of direct contact with the audience, because the audience is part of the concert, too, as much as anyone on stage, and it's a shame not to get to meet them if you get the chance.

'Rent' audiences tend to be pretty vocal. They scream and cheer a lot.

I believe that classical music comes through listening and practice, and it can be fun both for the singer or performer and the listener or audience, as long as the performer is taught to recognise the pulse of the audience.

I like to see other bands, and I like to hear their songs, but I really like it when they engage the audience.

The idea of standing five feet away from Norah Jones and listening to her sing Neil Young's 'Down By The River' was just phenomenal. I compare that to what my kids know of at a concert, which is sitting in a stadium and watching a huge screen.

I started performing in musical events after the success of 'Victory' and fans demanded the song 'Khaali Quarter' in every show.

Comedians play off of social commentary.

I just want my music to involve an audience in what's taking place onscreen.

I go to metal concerts as well as classical concerts, and I love both of them.

I don't care if I tell that story and John Roderick gets up afterward and yells, 'I hope you enjoyed the white privilege, mortality comedy of John Hodgman!' That's me!" I'm going to play a sad Handsome Family song at the end and I guarantee you everyone is going to love it because, sometimes, you need a grown man or woman to tell you what you like.

The musical is amazing. i mean,i don't throw around that word very often unless im talking about myself. Being humble is one of my many fine qualities. IGN Interview May 2009

Comedy is the result of what's happening, not what people are doing. Because if people are doing comedy. It's embarrassing. The individual elements have to be straight-faced, serious, realistic with a firm basis. What makes it comedy is a somewhat shifted way to put it together.

I love doing meta-humor, as long as it doesn't become too distracting and it's subtle.

The audiences certainly have declined. If I go to the theatre now I find people come there to eat and smoke and talk to one another. And look like scarecrows.

Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude.

Little fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak with pockets for all his gear, his shiny black shoes, his carefully cut widow's peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent that grew thicker or thinner depending on who he was talking to, did not look like a threat. He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire. It had never previously occurred to Vimes that, just possibly, the joke was on other people.

Hey yogurt, if you're so cultured, how come I never see you at the opera?

Some audiences can shake and bang their heads on the stage to riffs all night long, but subtlety is an art that must be mastered if you're going to be remembered.

People vomitied at my movies; not because of the movie but because they were drunk. I took credit anyway.