Improvisers Quotes

#1. Personally, I've found one of the more stimulating ways of playing in recent times has been to kind of move outside the free improvised area and work with people who are probably improvisers but they have a particular way of working.

Derek Bailey

#2. John Hughes loved improvisers.

Edie McClurg

#3. I don't want to see an experiment. Experiment at home - when you show up on stage, I want to see a result. I think a lot of improvisers, you'll see them some nights and they just stink, and they go, "Well, we're just improvising." Like that's a license to have a shitty night!

Z'EV

#4. I could easily fill up each week with going to see debuts of friends' compositions alone. When you add in all of the bands I'm interested in catching and all of the improvisers that I still love, it gets almost impossibly daunting. I try to do as much as I can.

David First

#5. In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very 'gifted' improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.

Malcolm Gladwell

#6. What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.

Frances Mayes

#7. Within the space of a few shows you can hear the band morph between their various identities as savvy arena rockers, intense starship pilots, vaudeville nostalgists, modest American folkies, boundary-dissolving improvisers, roots-conscious spiritualists, and mind-fucking pranksters.

Richard Gehr

#8. Coming out of Dallas and doing commercial work in Dallas - if you had improv background in Dallas, then you were instantly shot to the top of the list of commercial bookings because they loved improvisers because you could elevate the material.

Allison Tolman

#9. When hiring, mix Harvard Nerds with Chicago Improvisers and stir.

Tina Fey

#10. I love when people improvise as long as they're great improvisers, what I mean by that is people can improvise within their characters and within the scene.

Scot Armstrong

#11. I realized that improvisers should probably always have time off. But musicians are always gigging and never have a chance to stop for a minute - unless something drastic occurs.

Keith Jarrett

#12. We're lucky enough, especially in these 'Madagascar' films, to be working with some of the best people in the industry, who are not only great actors, but great comedians and improvisers and filmmakers. And they then become a part of creating their characters.

Eric Darnell

#13. Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by the end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in good form, I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget there are people in front of me. Great improvisers are like priests; they are thinking only of their god.

Stephane Grappelli

#14. Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks pre-arranged, This is because they accept all offers made - which is something no 'normal' person would do.

Keith Johnstone

#15. When you hear Bach or Mozart, you hear perfection. Remember that Bach, Mozart and Beethoven were great improvisers. I can hear that in their music.

Dave Brubeck

#16. Italians are great improvisers. If something unforeseen happens, they throw up their hands, and they adjust.

Max Von Sydow

#17. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.(p.115)

Malcolm Gladwell

#18. In a scene [where the improvisers must interact] without the letter S, the audience is waiting for you to lose - so they can laugh at you. Don't try to win.

Keith Johnstone

#19. Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

Albert Einstein

#20. Whether or not we follow any particular spiritual tradition, the benefits of love and kindness are obvious to anyone.

Dalai Lama

#21. It is very natural that every one who makes anything inside themselves that is makes it entirely out of what is in them does naturally have to have two civilizations. They have to have the civilization that makes them and the civilization that has nothing to do with them.

Gertrude Stein

#22. And yet the night was still fresh: young as new dawn.
There was still time for worlds to change, if that was to be their fate.

Ross Turner

#23. Your career will include thousands of opportunities to transform yourself. Many will disrupt all that you have built. Each is an opportunity to choose to be vulnerable, to let go, to be reborn.

Bill Jensen