Expressive Performance Quotes

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do. It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head].

I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, "What did they teach you?" And she said, "They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room." I'm happy to say she was laughing while she said it, but she meant it. I've never learned to be a candle burning in an empty room. So I go on the screen, and I say whatever I'm told to say.

All of the technique doesn't matter... only if the feeling is right.

To make wail and lament for one's ill fortune, when one will win a tear from the audience, is well worthwhile.

I love music. I do play. It's like mathematics, and it's also emotional. It's nice to play, for no other reason than just to play.

I was like a well trained pianist who knows which note to hit, but can't make the music his own.

I enjoy the more floaty, exposed, elegant singing.

I was pirouette and flourish, I was filigree and flame. How could I count my blessings when I didn't know their names?

Jesus, music has always been my first love. I use music in my work because it's the fastest way to an emotional place. You hear a song, and that memory comes right back-- you're there... Making music is immediate, and it's all about you. If you're playing guitar, the feeling comes through-- the way you bend the note, the intensity with which you hit the strings. With making films, although it's real emotion, it's false emotion. You're lying.

Acting is just another way to express myself as an artist. I realized if you're an artist, you're an artist and you can express that through music, through painting, through photography, through acting - this is just another way for me to express myself.

We're going to sing about things that matter to us. The balancing act is to present these ideas but also make the music exciting and sort of fun enough that even if you're not paying attention to the lyrics, you might still like the songs anyway. That's the idea.

When I go onstage, I'm going to work ...I feel like my performance is about an emotional connection. I want to connect with people, whether it's like a romantic song or a happy song.

Piano playing consists of common sense, heart and technical resources. All three should be equally developed. Without common sense you are a fiasco, without technique an amateur, without heart a machine. The profession does have its hazards.

Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.

I can't really attribute my success onscreen to any formula and suggest you "do this or that" to make it as an actor.

A radio play actually ended up being the first acting job I ever had. A lot of times when I'm on camera, I'm playing characters that are more like myself, and I don't get to do a lot of real character work. But when you're doing animation, you are the very epitome of colorful characters. I think I'm just really into make believe.

The kiss. There are all sorts of kisses, lad, from the sticky confection to the kiss of death. Of them all, the kiss of an actress is the most unnerving. How can we tell if she means it or if she's just practicing?

That's a skill that I'm proud of: to be able to be a jazz musician and go a bit crazy sometimes and other times be able to pull it all in and lay it down like a track.

Great thoughts ensure musical expression.

There is a certain... chivalry to the style of singing I normally do. Part of the fun for me will be to leave that at the door.

If I write songs and I think they sound good, then that's it. That's what I do. I'm not a technical musician, which is fine for rock and roll.

I'd try to write my poems in a certain rhythm. I had my rock 'n' roll stuff for performing and my denser stuff for writing.

I learned how to be more theatrical and have more fun, and to take a song and sing it over and over again in different ways, and make it different each time. I'm not just singing the song - it's this thing that's affecting me.

You either have it or you don't. You play your horn just like you sing a song or a hymn. If it's in your heart, you express yourself in the tune.

I think the idea is that every time we perform Big Red Machine music it should be different somehow - like, different people, different songs maybe, definitely different versions of the songs.