Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I first started, it was a dare. Someone basically said, 'You're a tough guy... but I'll bet you won't get on a microphone in front of a bunch of people.' I was terrified, but I did it. Once I broke the ice and got onstage and got some laughs, I thought, 'That's not so bad.'
My dad loves to be talked about, good or bad. He just loves it. He's not even hearing the content, he's just hearing him. When I'm onstage, he's looking at the audience members and can't believe that there are strangers listening to me, and he's just delighted by the whole thing.
The good thing about most of the girls that I've met on the road is that, regardless of whether they're cute or not, man - they can bring it onstage, which is inspiring not just for young girls and young people in general but for myself because then it makes me want to step it up.
The first night was awful because I was so afraid, and I was never more afraid because it was going out of my character to be outgoing and to be vulnerable and to be out there and onstage. My hands were sweaty and I couldn't swallow, and I drank a bottle of wine to calm my nerves.
I sort of fell in love with it when I was in high school doing theater. And so, as sometimes happens when kids - they graduate high school, and people turn to them and say, 'So what are you going to do with your life?' I thought, 'Well, I like being onstage. I like being an actor.'
I have a company in the U.K., a performance-capture studio. We're looking to push the boundaries of performance-capture technology in film and video games, but also in live theater, using real-time performance capture with actors onstage, and combining that with holographic imagery.
That's kind of fuse for the show - those first 10-15 seconds you're onstage. The curtain drops and you see the crowd for the first time and they see you for the first time. The response and the energy that's going on right there - to me, that sets the tone for the rest of the night.
How do you top 'Mormon?' I get sent scripts all the time and I don't know what I would do next. What do you do after that? So I think if you do see me onstage, you'll see me in something dramatic, maybe, or you'll see me try my hand at something else. Perhaps fail, terribly, but try.
I felt like onstage I have to have a certain amount of anonymity, like, personal anonymity, to feel loose and free. When you're up there with people who've known you for a decade, and you make a bad joke and you hear the cackling behind the drums, it's hard to get lost in the moment.
I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.
I think it's important to be friends with the person you have to kiss onstage in front of a hundred people. You might not be friends in real life - especially if you're in high school - but you need to at least be 'secret friends' for it to work. Try to be comfortable with each other.
I had one guy say, 'I watched your show and didn't agree with what you said.' And I'm like, 'It's a joke. How could you not agree? I can understand you saying it's not funny.' But it's like my going onstage and doing a knock-knock and somebody going, 'I disagree. There's no door here.'
In real life we don't know what's going to happen next. So how can you be that way on a stage? Being alive to the possibility of not knowing exactly how everything is going to happen next - if you can find places to have that happen onstage, it can resonate with an experience of living.
Well, a lot of people don't know this about me, but I'm actually shy around people I don't know. I would just say with my first concert, my first tour, I didn't really talk onstage. I was like, 'Thank you, I love you guys,' or whatever. But now I've just kind of learned to work a crowd.
It's funny how concert dreams are such a recurring thing among musicians. It's like how everyone has that dream of their teeth falling out? Except musicians have this dream of just standing onstage and there being all these people out there, and for some reason, the song isn't starting.
I feel like sometimes I get even more goofy onstage than I am offstage. I'm not trying to make the music less than what it is. Even if it's hard for me and I have to think about a lot of details, it's none of the audience's business. I don't want them to feel that I'm having a hard time.
I'm not a really religious person, but those moments onstage feel like some sort of religious experience because no one holds back, especially 'Stay With Me' when I finish the show. It kind of turns into an anthem when I perform it live, and it feels like there's a lot of love in the room.
I never really thought of music as a particularly social thing. I experienced music through recordings as opposed to concerts. It just makes you think about the way things are put together, the way things are written as opposed to the showbusiness of something onstage, so no regrets there.
When I started out in the late '80s, my act was pretty terrible, and for years, I kind of toiled in obscurity. I don't believe in a hierarchy in comedy; I feel that a person deserves respect the first time they get onstage, and after that, they just have to be funny and get more consistent.
Onstage was where I felt the most confident and in control and free, and as I've gotten older, it's gotten more and more daunting. And I think that's also part of my desire to keep confronting that and pushing through to find that childlike or youthful ignorance against fear and keep at it.
You're standing onstage in a sold-out arena with people singing your music, and you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Because here's a party that, essentially, it's for you. And you still somehow feel like you don't belong there. Those people all have their lives and go back home.
Honestly, I never needed a mask to go onstage. It was me who was there, and it was always what I felt, based on what I had learned at home, in my religion, and from society. I clung to that: 'This is me, it has to be me.' And if I had an encounter with someone of the same sex, I looked away.
You must keep people happy backstage because that affects what's onstage. During a run, the playwright feels like the mayor of a small town filled with noble creatures who have to get out there and make it brand new every night. When a production works, it's unlike any other joy in the world.
Inaugural speeches are supposed to be huge and stirring. Presidents haul our heroes onstage, from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. George W. Bush brought the Liberty Bell. They use history to make greatness and achievements seem like something you can just take down from the shelf.
The pancreas releases insulin to make you ready for fight or flight when you're scared. So if you don't fight or flight - if you stay onstage, telling jokes - then your body stores more fat in your tummy which makes you insulin resistant. All comedians have fat bellies, even if they exercise.
What I do onstage, there's maybe .0001 percent of the population that acts like that. I talk like that because it makes me laugh, and because I know a couple of people that talk like that. They're really that Southern. And they do funny things. I love 'em; they're awesome. They're good people.
Michael Buble is seriously my favorite entertainer. Have you ever seen the guy in concert? He's hilarious. Women love him. Guys want to meet him. He has everything that I wish I could do onstage. And I'm guessin' he's a good-lookin' guy - although he's not one of 'People' magazine's sexiest men.
I used to hear all these guys on 78s at my mother's when I was a teenager... I used to daydream that I was onstage playing the solos; I'm playing with B.B. King, and I'm playing with Lowell Fulsom, Jimmy McCracklin. And I literally ended up being in a band that backed them up at different clubs.
Being onstage is like being rock star. Whereas if you're doing a movie, it's such a confined space. You know, you do a comedy, it's so hard, too, 'cause with a comedy, there's no vocal reaction, there's no energy that you get back that spurs you on to be funnier because everyone has to be quiet.
Stepping back into theatre, a childhood dream, I always felt like I would be onstage. I hadn't imagined myself in a composer role... I find it so satisfying to be behind the scenes and writing the music and watching it elevated and characterized by different voices than my own. It's so exciting.
I find with television, you have to play personality, whereas onstage, everyone talks about 'the character,' and what you do. It's a very different thing, because stage is much bigger, but on television, for things to come across to the public, I think you have to play a bit of your personality.
'Black Diamond' blew my mind. Ace Frehley came onstage and did it with us at Madison Square Garden a few years ago, which was a total high watermark in my life. When I was 13, I never thought in a million years that I would even talk to him; I'd probably pass out. And here I am playing with him!
I prefer to connect with fans from the stage. Like, I don't have a Twitter page, or anything like that. So for me, that's what the show is about. For me - is a way to interact with fans; being up onstage and showing them, through music - which is all I really know - the best way to say thank you.
When you start performing, you realize that you have to separate yourself from the pack. So I would never wear bell-bottoms, which everybody else was wearing. I had short hair - and to see a 21-year-old guy walk onstage without longish hair was, in itself, weird. Every entertainer needs a shtick.
I was five years old, onstage singing 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' - a rock version - and I was always wanting to entertain. But the biggest thing for me is just country music has helped me get through the worst times of my life and the best times of my life. I want to give that back to people.
I don't pull punches at all, and I write my material for adults. But if kids like it, they can come watch it. I'll never change anything about what I do for anyone. I kind of think that's why kids like me. If you're a teenager, and there's someone onstage talking to you like an adult, that's good.
I have this very abstract idea in my head. I wouldn't even want to call it stand-up, because stand-up conjures in one's mind a comedian with a microphone standing onstage under a spotlight telling jokes to an audience. The direction I'm going in is eventually, you won't know if it's a joke or not.
I continue to write songs that are topically related to social, political and economic issues of our time, but I also recognize that onstage, I have a lot of fun and audiences have a lot of fun, so I'm trying to package the messages in music and sounds that are fun to perform and fun to listen to.
Touring is tough. You're almost in a haze because you don't really know where you are half the time: You're in a hotel room one moment, and the next thing you know, you're onstage performing for 60,000 people, then you're back on an airplane. It's very hectic and I couldn't do it without my family.
There are so many challenges and different parts to the job of singing. When you're in the studio, you have to be really, really, precise. You've got to keep everything clean and nice because that's going to be something that's down forever. And then you go onstage, and it's much more in the moment.
In films, you are a commodity. You are a look, something that the camera really likes, something that has struck an audience in a certain way. It's not really so much about transforming yourself the way actors do onstage. I think there's a difference between the skill of acting in movies and onstage.
I want to write the reparations joke that makes people go, 'Yay! I'm so happy!' It's easy to go onstage and just make fun of all the 'isms' instead, but we can't all be Jeff Dunham. Although that pays very well... it pays way better to be Jeff Dunham than it ever paid to be George Carlin or Lenny Bruce.
When I played the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve, I got to bring Wiley, my 85-pound black lab. He's responsible for my favorite New Year's memory of all: At the end of the show, he ran onstage and then out across all the tables in the showroom, sending champagne glasses and gamblers flying.
I always felt like there wasn't a blueprint for father-daughter relationships - for them or for us. Because what are they supposed to do with us, treat us like boys, or small women, or what? Father-daughter relationships are so unique from family to family, and I'd love to watch it explored more onstage.
I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.
There is a cliche that probably has some anecdotal evidence on the side that comedians are very depressed people, but that's because no one is ever going to seem as funny in a normal conversation as compared to when they're up there onstage in the spotlight making a huge audience keel over with laughter.
Being able to do lead roles in pictures or onstage or whatever it is that you're doing in acting is obviously what you strive for because you want to better yourself as an actor and you want to better yourself as a person as well. But that does come with a lot of responsibility and a great deal of weight.
In 'The Sound of Music,' I was a von Trapp daughter in a white dress with a blue satin sash, and my line was, 'I'm Brigitta. I'm 12, and all I want is a good time.' I got a laugh. And I was so delighted, I laughed, too. Sadly, that's a problem I still have - onstage, I laugh hysterically at how funny I am.
When Kehlani brought me out onstage, I really enjoyed that. I was just appreciative for her to think of me and bring me out woman to woman, introducing me to a whole new audience to me. It was just showing that I was appreciated for what I'm doing, that some people mess with me, and I'm all over the place.
Some weeks, I'm super-duper busy, so I can only fit cardio in here and there, a lot of stuff happens in the afternoon, so I can get up and have a workout, which makes me feel awesome for the rest of my day. There's just something sexy about feeling strong. And every night I'm onstage, I get another workout.