Great Performance Sayings

#1. I sing in many different colors and, hopefully, they add up to a great performance that, after you leave the theater, makes you feel like I've really shared something of myself.

Idina Menzel

#2. Landing on your butt twenty thousand times is where great performance comes from.

Geoff Colvin

#3. Even though a screenplay is performed only once, unlike other forms of drama, it's still a performance in itself, and unless it's a great performance, odds are that actors will not come, and a movie will never be made.

William Monahan

#4. I look up to Bernard Hopkins as a fighter. I'm honored to be his co-main event and to be able to give a great performance.

Keith Thurman

#5. Whenever I'm waiting behind the stage, it's kind of like my normal Jackie mode is me talking a lot, playing around, but superstar Jackie mode is me concentrating on making sure that this performance was going to be a great performance.

Jackie Evancho

#6. You worry just as much about great performance as you do about underperformance.

Mary Callahan Erdoes

#7. Great performance is in our hands far more than most of us ever suspected.

Geoff Colvin

#8. That's the only way to do it. Just like an actor. You can get a great performance if you do a bunch of takes and edit it. You find the moments and string them together.

Lindsey Buckingham

#9. Have you seen McConaughey in 'Unsolved Mysteries?' Even back then, it's a great performance! And he's mowing the lawn.

Cary Fukunaga

#10. We are a global society, and one does not have to be from Germany to give a great performance of Beethoven.

Leonard Slatkin

#11. I think 'SNL' is so well-known for its musical performances, as well, and people really breaking into America through a really great performance on there. So I think me and Gotye are both really excited to be amongst such company. You know, it's great.

Kimbra

#12. I think it's healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care - that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

Beyonce Knowles

#13. Seeing babies and little children smile or even just be inquisitive about a bottle cap isnpires me. Watching a great performance, particularly live or in the moment. My favorite actor at the moment is the three-time Tony Award-winning Mark Rylance. Makes me work to be better.

Graham Shiels

#14. Everyone has his own agenda, and it can overshadow the important thing, which is to capture a great performance. They listen to it and think, "Oh, I'm not mixed loud enough ... I missed a note there ... I'm a half-step off on the turnaround."

Dick Latvala

#15. A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures.

Susan Strasberg

#16. I love storytelling, you know, beyond anything. I love a great story beyond a great performance. Storytelling is about what we all do together and how we collaborate together. A performance can be a collaboration in ways, but oftentimes it's one individual thing.

Jake Gyllenhaal

#17. What you really believe about the source of great performance thus becomes the foundation of all you will ever achieve

Geoff Colvin

#18. To be happy is very important to do a great performance because you have to be comfortable; your mind has to be clear.

Lyoto Machida

#19. It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.

Arnold Palmer

#20. If you facilitate your subordinates' steady progress in meaningful work, make that progress salient to them, and treat them well, they will experience the emotions, motivations, and perceptions necessary for great performance.

Teresa Amabile

#21. For example, the character of Claire in In Dreams wasn't imagined enough by me. Annette Bening is a great actress, and she gave a great performance, but because I hadn't fully written it essentially the character wasn't finished.

Neil Jordan

#22. The fans get to see you, and you can do great by your record if you have a great performance or a great night there. That's all part of the business. But at their core, awards shows are not really a sincere thing. For a lot of years, the artists had to pay to play their own set.

Jay-Z

#23. They got a great performance from me. I was happy.

Jimmy Fallon

#24. I had this totally impossible dream of being an actress. Trust me, just because I'm lucky enough to be doing this doesn't make any of this less of a pipe dream. And nothing gets my juices flowing like a really great performance. To see someone on stage, I get really excited.

Olivia Thirlby

#25. If I see a great performance on television, onstage, in the movies, I go to work the next day with a renewed energy and less fear. These great artists take me out of my life and make me want to go there.

Elaine Stritch

#26. Keep your app simple, keep your data simple, and keep your interactions with other systems simple, and you will stand a much better chance of achieving great performance for your app.

Anonymous

#27. There is a great amount of precision within each individual's technique and role in the play. When you put 22 of them out there, it can look chaotic but when you break down individual performance, it looks less so.

Brendan Daly

#28. We can't spend all day trying to get the performance exactly right and you just have to accept that and move on and accept the medium that you're working in and you know, there's a beauty in working under constraints and limitations. I think a lot of great things can come out of that.

Emily Deschanel

#29. As one who appreciated the tragic side of eating, it seemed to him that anything other than fruit for dessert implied a reprehensible frivolity, and cakes in particular ended up annihilating the flavour of quiet sadness that must be allowed to linger at the end of a great culinary performance.

Manuel Vazquez Montalban

#30. The effortlessness of a performance for which great strength is needed is a spectacle of whose aesthetic beauty the East has an exceedingly sensitive and grateful appreciation.

Eugen Herrigel

#31. When the audience enjoys your performance, you feel like a magician who is doing magic. It's a great feeling!

Kailash Kher

#32. No commander was ever privileged to lead a finer force; no commander ever derived greater inspiration from the performance of his troops.

John J. Pershing

#33. Don't let talent get in way of team performance. Great players do what's outstanding for team, not what makes them stand out

Jerry West

#34. I think we need to teach pleasure. What beautiful touch means. What reciprocity means. What being connected and what intimacy means. Boys get out there at a young age and the performance posturing is so great and ends up being hard and aggressive.

Eve Ensler

#35. I make films from the heart. I want to concentrate on the job of doing great and honest performances, and I'm gonna get better with every performance of mine, with every film of mine.

John Abraham

#36. I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It's a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it's a great date or something that's just hugely romantic.

Renee Fleming

#37. When I was on the ice, in the lights, with the music and the motion, there was a certain kind of flirtation that gave great energy and expressiveness to my performance.

Peggy Fleming

#38. Good is somebody who delivered and allowed the company to overcome obstacles, without leaving a profound impact on its culture. Great is somebody who leads his company to achievements and performance and value that nobody was expecting it had.

Carlos Ghosn

#39. I'm a Fool" may not be a great song, but Sinatra's shattering performance of it transcends the material. His emotion is so naked that we're at once embarrassed and compelled: we literally feel for him.

James Kaplan

#40. Utilizing a nonlinear approach and companion competencies makes it possible for people to move from good performance to great.

John H. Zenger

#41. Great achievement often happens when our backs are up against the wall. Pressure can actually enhance your performance.

Robin Sharma

#42. I never use hedge funds because I am well aware of what drives future performance, and hedge funds start out with a great disadvantage in every major category: taxes, fees, risk management, transparency and liquidity.

Peter Mallouk

#43. If you have a great part, you have the opportunity to give a good performance. The greatest actors get the best parts, and the best parts make the greatest actors. There are plenty of people who are as talented, who just never got the part.

Tom Hollander

#44. Beware of Methodologies. They are a great way to bring everyone up to a dismal, but passable, level of performance, but at the same time, they are aggravating to more talented people who chafe at the restrictions that are placed on them.

Joel Spolsky

#45. The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.

Leo Kottke

#46. Inability is often the mother of restriction, and restriction is the great mother of inventive performance.

Holger Czukay

#47. Although simulators are great for building step-by-step knowledge of a procedure, the worst thing that can happen in a sim is that you get a bad grade on your performance.

Chris Hadfield

#48. I learned a lot about acting - watching not just myself but other actors and learning how to distinguish between two great takes. It's also about one's own taste in performance.

Ralph Fiennes

#49. A great quality of your preparation will manifest on your performance.

Euginia Herlihy

#50. Teacher compensation isn't the only factor in cultivating great teaching. Other important priorities include changing how we measure student performance, providing more flexibility to teacher-preparation programs, and improving how we train and support principals.

Michael Bennet

#51. I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

Sam Mendes

#52. I don't know enough about hip-hop, though I've heard some great hip-hop. I just did a thing with Qwest Love - we did a performance together in Memphis at the Folk Alliance Festival, and we had a great jam and a conversation.

Bela Fleck

#53. They played great and I can honestly say I don't think any of us were expecting this type of performance. They were great. You have to give them credit for that.

Erik Spoelstra

#54. Don't forget there are two sides to performing. Finding the truth, but you also have to be transparent enough for the audience to see it. How many times have you seen a performance and thought: 'Well, it seems to be meaning a great deal to you but it ain't coming across to me?' It is to be shared.

John Hurt

#55. You become like that, what you admire most. By admiring excellence and practicing, it can boost you to become excellent.

Mark LaMoure

#56. Great acting is as much about the choices a performer makes as it is about their ability.

Stewart Stafford

#57. A man had said that to her once at the stage door. She'd been leaving after a theatre session, buzzing still with the high of performance, and he'd stopped her to say how much he'd enjoyed it. "You've a great talent for observation," he'd said. "Ears, eyes, and heart, all at once.

Kate Morton

#58. The great thing about performance capture is you can go off, and then, without changing costume, you can become another character.

Andy Serkis

#59. I went to a performance-art high school, and a teacher there was signing me up for open-mic nights at the comedy club. I think about it now, and I think, 'Well, that may be inappropriate,' but it was great!'

Margaret Cho

#60. He could feel the Great Iron War coming to an end now, but he no longer had his finger on the button. The curtains of the world were about to close, and the play of life would soon be over. There would be no applause.

Dean F. Wilson

#61. The room was the poem, the day I was in. Oh Christ. What writes my poem is the second ring, inner or outer. Poetry is just the performance of it. These little things, whether I write them or not. That's the score. The thing of great value is you. Where you are, glowing and fading, while you live.

Eileen Myles

#62. I had a great start in television; the first thing I did was an episode of 'Performance' called 'The Entertainer' with Michael Gambon playing Archie Rice.

Helen McCrory

#63. The sign of a great player is how much he elevates his colleagues' performance.

Phil Jackson

#64. The great challenge to management today is to make productive the tremendous new resource, the knowledge worker. This, rather than the productivity of the manual worker, is the key to economic growth and economic performance in today's society.

Peter Drucker

#65. There is something about me that is collaborative, that wants to get the best performance out of somebody else or to hear something that somebody else has done that's good and to try and make it great.

Ryan Lewis

#66. I love skating. I love the speed, the power, the excitement, the feeling that
even for just a moment
I can defy gravity and fly through the air. And I love the way that a great skating performance, like any work of art, can move an audience to laughter or tears.

Brian Boitano

#67. In the minds of great managers, consistent poor performance is not primarily a matter of weakness, stupidity, disobedience, or disrespect. It is a matter of miscasting.

Marcus Buckingham

#68. To make a great movie is such a combination of different things that need to come into play to actually make a memorable film and not have a film to fall by the wayside, to have something live on during the years, and one of those elements is the commitment the actors have to their performance.

Edward Zwick

#69. Every time an actress is celebrated for her great work, I cheer. For the more brilliant their performance, the more the audience demands stories about women ... And as we all know: a great year for women in film, is just a great year for film.

Jessica Chastain

#70. I've been really lucky to work with a lot of really great actors, so watching the films back, it's really important to admire the people that you were working with and see their full performance.

Juno Temple

#71. Performing is always my biggest rush. The energy is boundless from a great crowd. I truly believe in energy as a force that is exchanged, especially in a performance situation. You give your utmost and the audience gives it back tenfold.

Matt Sorum

#72. When you hear a great two-track of a performance in Carnegie Hall, let's say, it sounds like you're right there at that moment. It's true to reality. And the closer it gets, once it gets too technical, it becomes very tinny to hear notes. It doesn't sound right. It has to be natural.

Tony Bennett

#73. In the end, the great leveler in any sport is performance on the field or on the court. Kids don't care what language players speak or if they eat tacos, rice, or sauerkraut. They don't care if they're white, black, or brown.

Cheech Marin

#74. Whereas a good player might do something really good in a game, a great player might do something two or three times in a row. That's what great players do, but they also work incredibly hard off the field in terms of the extra effort they've put into making sure their own performance gets better.

Warren Gatland

#75. It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management performance. It forces the manager to think about what he is doing and to be able to explain his actions and behavior.

Peter Drucker

#76. I know, for me, you know, my generation - I never would have known anything about Robert Preston's performance in 'The Music Man' if there hadn't been a film where he played the part. I just heard how great he was on Broadway way before my time.

John Lloyd Young

#77. It was at a performance art space that's no longer around, Gusto House ... All of these great performers from all over the country lived on the Lower East Side, and they would take somebody's living room that opened right onto the street, open the door and charge tickets and put up chairs.

John Leguizamo

#78. Almost universally, the kind of performance we give on social media is positive. It's more "Let me tell you how well things are going. Look how great I am." It's rarely the truth: "I'm scared. I'm struggling. I don't know.

Ryan Holiday

#79. My great wish is to go on in a strict but silent performance of my duty; to avoid attracting notice, and to keep my name out of the newspapers.

Thomas Jefferson

#80. I'd like to think I could do something great - a performance like Meryl Streep's in 'Sophie's Choice' - at some point in my life. At the same time, though, I don't want to put too much pressure on myself to be great.

Heather Graham

#81. I strive for perfection, but of course it can never be perfect. I'm never satisfied at the end of a performance. But the great thing about live theatre is that every night you get another chance to get it right.

Anthony Warlow

#82. It's easy to identify many investment managers with great recent records. But past results, though important, do not suffice when prospective performance is being judged. How the record has been achieved is crucial ...

Warren Buffett

#83. I don't call cut between the takes - it's my way to help the actor keep focused. As soon as you say 'cut' you have 10 people jumping on them and everybody's trying to do a great job, and they do, but sometimes they forget that the more important thing is the performance, creating the performance.

Michel Gondry

#84. My parents were really encouraging. But I had to teach them the proper way you respond to an actor after seeing a play - regardless of whether you like their performance you tell them how great they are because they have to go on again the next night.

Billy Crudup

#85. A really great actor, in a lucky performance, can transform himself or herself. I've seen actors do that. But often it's a mechanical transformation, which isn't as interesting, and you've got to be careful how you go about something like that, I think.

Alan Alda

#86. I think audiences sometimes mistakenly assume a quality performance comes from some great emotional disturbance rather than really intense concentration. Concentration and flow is what it's all about.

Rivers Cuomo

#87. Great teachers and schools expect and nurture quality work and quality performance. Great teachers inspire and demand quality, ever urging their students to higher levels of excellence. They shun mere conformity and expect their students to think and perform to their ever-increasing potential.

Oliver DeMille

#88. As an actor, you want new challenges. U.S. TV can be very formulaic. So when something gets a reaction, as 'The Slap' has, that's great. The sense I get is that it's not about me or my performance. More than anything it's the subject matter that people are focused on.'

Jonathan LaPaglia

#89. As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight,' the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on to make a lasting contribution to rock.

Jon Landau

#90. Oh, well,' Mrs. Zender continued, 'Mother always said that Mr. Zender had other talents. He was good looking, and I think Mother put looking good right up there with the harpsichord, an instrument that has limited performance time and requires a great deal of maintenance.

E.L. Konigsburg

#91. I wanted to get out in the world, have a great job, make my mark, and see how far I could go. And I wanted to make good on the philosophy my mother drilled into us with all the subtlety of a Lady Gaga performance. I got it loud and clear. I would need to succeed, and then I could possibly be happy.

Karen Finerman

#92. I don't attribute an actor's great success to their own individual performance when it's something as collaborative as a movie.

Jesse Eisenberg

#93. The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.

Jack Dee

#94. It's great to do theater and have the live response and know what that can bring to a performance. I like to juggle as many mediums as I can.

Rose McIver

#95. Great habits improve performance and brings great success.

Debasish Mridha

#96. It's such a performance to bring stuff into America. It's a great luxury when I am in England.

Terence Stamp

#97. The great ones show you what you can get away with. The shitty ones remind you what never to bother with.

Patton Oswalt

#98. I'd never played a cop before, and this particular role with what she is going thru, especially during the first season, covering her alcoholism to her on the job performance, was a great opportunity for me as an actress.

Nancy McKeon

#99. Music films are great, but they can never compete with a live performance. Live music is what it is. It's the whole point. You experience it in the moment.

Jonathan Demme

#100. I'm never satisfied with my performance. I want to keep pushing myself. The great thing about being an actor is you're always learning. That's what excites me about the job and what continues to drive me.

Drew Fuller