Street Performance Quotes

I'm an urban act.

I grew up in a really rural town, Stratford, Ontario, with 30,000 people. There's a big festival thrown in the town. A lot of people travel from all over the world to see it, and growing up, I actually used to busk on the street. I'd play my guitar, sing, and people would throw money in the case.

One night I was standing on Third Avenue playing my guitar, when this big Irish policeman came strolling by, and stopped to listen to my singing and playing. When I was done, he politely handed me a ticket for disturbing the peace, while at the same time telling me how much he liked my voice. I wish I still had that ticket.

I worked in a supermarket for a year; I worked in a finance department at a university, a pub, busking and singing. I tried to be a nanny for about three weeks.

I have been performing in the street for more than 50 years: magic for basically 60 years, and the high wire 45 years. The beauty of it is that it's never the same. It's never easy. And yet, part of my art is to make it look easy.

Indian street magic tends to be very gory, blood and guts. One trick is for a magician to take a knife and appear to cut his kid's head almost off. The magician then says to the crowd, 'Well I can continue to cut off my son's head or you can all give me some money.' Then he wanders around and takes 10 rupees from everyone and restores his son.

I busked from the age of 13 until I was 18.

In New Orleans, people are still influenced by one another. You got these bands that play every week on Frenchmen Street, and on their breaks, they might go see the reggae band that's right next door. You might get the musicians from the reggae band to sit in with the brass musicians. Everyone is having fun.

At the end of the day, I'm a New Orleans musician. Whatever that means.

I will always dance in the street.

When I was a kid, there was so much talent outside of recorded music.

I hate to say it, but Christmas as a kid was always a moneymaking venture for me. I played trumpet, and a friend of mine who played trombone and a guy who played tuba, every Christmas we'd go out for three or four days beforehand and play Christmas carols on our horns.

When I was at school, I used to stay on a balcony singing and people would stand around listening.

I've taken clowns into the war in Bosnia, the refugee camps of Kosovo, and none of those are any more important than clowning in a subway or an elevator or just walking down the street.

...."the sound of a barrel organ rising from the deepest golden vein of the day; two or three bars of a chorus, played on a distant piano over and over again, melting in the sun on the white pavement, lost in the fire of high noon.

If you're watching a parade, don't follow it. It never changes. If the parade is boring, run in the opposite direction. You will fast-forward the parade.

When I see professional clowns, mimes, or people who makes ballon animals, I think of their relatives and how disappointed they must be.

I remember going for the first time to a place called The Roxy in New York because you can see people breakdancing there. That's the only reason I went! It's amazing, kids are still doing that.

I'd go to the farmers' market in Santa Barbara, and I'd put out my guitar case, and I'd test out these little ditty songs that I would write, and I would get a couple of avocados, a bag of pistachios, and, like, fifteen bucks. That was a lot of money for me.

Any eyes on me - a late-night street sweeper, some dude texting in his parked car, the homeless guy talking to himself - make me feel uncomfortable when I skate. Everyone expects me to do certain things.

I'm so lucky to not have to busk anymore, but I realized as soon as I didn't need to do it that I really missed it.

I painted the Astor-Victoria sign seven times, and it's 395 feet wide and 58 feet high. I dropped a gallon of purple paint on Seventh Avenue and 47th Street from 15 stories up and didn't kill anybody. I dropped a brush at Columbus Circle. It fell on a guy's camel-hair coat.

Well, everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking.

I had this little rap group, and we were called '2 Too Many'... We used to hang out in front of Jazzy Jeff's record studio every day.

Maybe if you see me begging on the streets, you might find me doing The Stone Roses the next day.