Performer Quotes

#1. So I'm sorry, I'm going to continue to talk to the people, because I do believe that if they get to know you and what you are as a human being, they can more appreciate what you are as a performer.

Mel Torme

#2. The Tinted Windows shows were very fun but it's very different for me as a performer. I'm not playing music - I'm just singing and I missed that. I miss rocking out on keys, drums, guitar ... whatever it is.

Taylor Hanson

#3. There's my personal life, my sensitive side, and then me as a performer, sexy and energised and fun.

Beyonce Knowles

#4. I don't think I could live without hair, makeup and styling, let alone be the performer I am. I am a glamour girl through and through. I believe in the glamorous life and I live one.

Lady Gaga

#5. Just as in sports, becoming an elite performer in business requires struggle, sacrifice, and honest (often painful) self-assessment... Learning how to implement these approaches is often what separates a brilliant thinker from a creative want-to-be.

G. Michael Maddock

#6. In the end, the market will decide which is the better performer: dirty coal-fired power or clean wind and solar. Market-based competition. That doesn't sound like communism to me.

Frances Beinecke

#7. It's never like we're up there being miserable at work, that's not something that happens for us. We love our work. So, when the performer loves what they're doing, it's easy for us to love what we're doing.

Jennifer Abbott

#8. As a performer, there was nobody better than Morrissey.

Mike Joyce

#9. I always knew I wanted to be a performer.

Heather Dubrow

#10. Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.

Clive James

#11. Ryan [Gosling] has a history with the Mickey Mouse Club. He was a child performer himself. And he took the time to get to know people.

Joel Silver

#12. There isn't a performer on earth that isn't an exhibitionist. There isn't any point in being in this business if you're not an exhibitionist. And, by the way, you can be an exhibitionist and be very shy as well.

Madonna Ciccone

#13. My mom made me go to a Britney Spears concert when I was young. And I was like, 'No, I don't want to!' she was like, 'You're going to be a performer, you need to see other people.'

Avril Lavigne

#14. I'm a performer. I've tried everything there is.

Gene Pitney

#15. Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ...

Kurt Vonnegut

#16. As a kid I was always a bit of a clown, a performer.

Simon Baker

#17. My parents inspire me every day. They are both incredible people that I love and look up to every day. Industry wise, I love what Justin Timberlake has done with his career. He's truly an idol to me, not only as a performer, but as a person as well.

Max Schneider

#18. I definitely wouldn't be the performer I am today if the gay audience had not been so supportive of me as a complete unknown.

Kiesza

#19. Yes, I am transgendered but I also am a cross-dresser - I dress as a woman. It's not that I just want to be seen as a female in our society, I'm also a drag queen and a performer - there are many levels there.

Alexis Arquette

#20. Society has definitely gotten to the point where everybody has to comment on anything, and if you want to stay sane as a performer, you're better off not reading that stuff.

Doug Benson

#21. If I belong to a tradition, it is a tradition that makes the masterpiece tell the performer what to do, and not the performer telling the piece what it should be like, or the composer what he ought to have composed.

Alfred Brendel

#22. Character actor' is a technical term denoting a clever stage performer who cannot act, and therefore makes an elaborate study of the disguises and stage tricks by which acting can be grotesquely simulated.

George Bernard Shaw

#23. You become successful, the way I see it, only if you're good enough to deliver what the public enjoys. If you're not, you won't have any audience; so the performer really has more to do with his success than the public does.

Johnny Carson

#24. I'm not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it's the recording or the performance side.

David Bowie

#25. It is still an open question, however, as to what extent exposure really injures a performer.

Harry Houdini

#26. When I was on the X-Factor, I found that I grew a lot as a performer. I knew I could sing but I didn't believe in myself enough ... I needed to hear that I was good.

Rebecca Ferguson

#27. What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen, he's become a different person.

Edith Head

#28. I'm not a natural performer or exhibitionist. When I was younger, I hated the focus, and it made me feel strange.

Lana Del Rey

#29. I'm most excited to see how I've grown as a performer. After Dancing With the Stars I really was able to evolve in a lot of ways and I'm excited to put that to use on stage.

Nick Carter

#30. I never thought of being a performer, never thought of being a singer, never thought of being a photographer. It's just the trajectory of my work. I go to the medium that serves the vision.

Patti Smith

#31. Something was still there, that something that distinguishes an artist from a performer: the revealing of self. Here I be. Not forlong, but here I be. In sensing her mortality, we sensed our own.

Studs Terkel

#32. Even as a stage performer, I have my garb which is leather jackets and black jeans to make me feel a certain way. The wardrobe is really important to feeling the character you're playing.

Andrew Dice Clay

#33. I wasn't playing a drag queen - I was playing an extraordinary performer.

John Lone

#34. One's concentration as a performer must remain centered on the action of which one is a part. For it is in truth only one's own concentration on the imagined reality of the role that can force the audience's attention to that same place.

Rick Dees

#35. There were times in my career ... when I felt like a trapeze artist doing dangerous somersaults without a net underneath. When you execute those somersaults flawlessly, the audience feels the same sense of triumph the performer does.

Beverly Sills

#36. A passion for any novel, and any character, can crystallise your ideas when you really need to be as open as possible as a performer.

Romola Garai

#37. I don't consider myself a stand-up comedian. I consider myself a performer; a comic as opposed to stand-up comedian. Stand-up comedians stand there and do their bits; I break every rule in creation. If there's a rule that can be broken in stand-up, I'll do it.

J. B. Smoove

#38. A tremendous social responsibility comes with being a successful public performer.

A. Bartlett Giamatti

#39. Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat 'King' Cole as a performer - not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I'd get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met.

Bruce Forsyth

#40. For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.

Stephen Sondheim

#41. There are so many factors that go into how you feel, as a performer, on any given movie, that it's really hard to identify which things are the things that help you be good, and which are the things that hinder you.

Alessandro Nivola

#42. The most important thing you can do as a performer is to be yourself, or be an onstage version of yourself. If you're not being true to yourself, and somebody likes that other version of you, you're kind of stuck.

Lyle Lovett

#43. I'm so not a performer, my drive to do [acting] is so different to other people - and I'm not discrediting that, they're born performers, they're people that you love to watch just be themselves. I like to be a little bit more in control. I like to make something.

Kristen Stewart

#44. I was a late bloomer. I wasn't a child performer.

Christian Borle

#45. On my Superwoman channel, I am more of a performer, I am aiming to make you guys laugh. With vlogs, it's just me and my day, boring or fun.

Lilly Singh

#46. I find that so often this work can so easily overcome you and knock you out of balance and become all you think about and all you care about and all you feel is important in your life, and it's kind of the opposite. Relationships first and people first and then you can be a great performer.

Erin Davie

#47. Show business is one of the few businesses that the devil will actually agree to own just a portion of your soul because he knows if you have a performer's ego you were probably working for him all along.

Marc Maron

#48. The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience.

Lester Bangs

#49. Self-control is a big deal in human performance. Getting better depends upon it. You cannot get better if it's not you who has to get better. You are the performer, period. You are the only thing you can control.

Henry Cloud

#50. I want to be a well-rounded, versatile performer.

Zac Efron

#51. My brother, who's a violinist now, was the real ham, the real performer of the family. His passion for the violin is the only thing that kept him from being an actor.

Peter Dinklage

#52. I think we all have a similar philosophy about comedy and comic performance which is that it's at its best when you can see the pleasure the performer has, when you can see a glimmer in the eye.

Mathew Baynton

#53. Performance-wise, you really need to be down in the trenches; you need to do the hard work, for a lot of reasons: To build yourself as a performer, to get a sense of the audience, to work hard and to wonder, 'Do I really want to do this?'

Joan Jett

#54. As a musician or a performer, you're meant to know what you're about, but it's ridiculous that someone 14 would have any idea of what they're about.

Ben Lee

#55. When you're casting a movie and when you're shooting a film, the eyes are the most important feature of any performer, really. Any great actor literally knows exactly how to use their eyes, and even as a filmmaker I love shooting huge close-ups because it's those eyes that mean so much to me.

Peter Jackson

#56. When I first got to New York, all I did was musicals. After a few years I had to make a conscious choice to close the door on musicals, because I was getting pigeon-holed as a musical theater performer.

Tamara Tunie

#57. A high performer is someone who says, 'I want to be the best at what I'm doing.'

Brendon Burchard

#58. I know who I am and what I'm doing in my life and what I've accomplished and continue to accomplish as a performer, as a writer, as an artist, as a person, as a human being.

Justin Bieber

#59. And at the same time, you are of course a performer, but it's very important that you understand that your role as a performer is to get the best performance from those wonderful colleagues that you have the chance to work with.

Michael Tilson Thomas

#60. I have never met a grateful performer in the movies.

Harry Cohn

#61. If you want to be a singer or a performer or absolutely anything in the world that you want to do, I think you should never give up, you should never let anyone put you down and tell you you can't do it, because if you believe in yourself you will go far

Perrie Edwards

#62. The true exceptional performer is on super pilot. Every single sense, every fiber of his body is brought together in what he is doing.

John Eliot

#63. I wouldn't say that I was a born performer, because I work very hard at it.

Anneliese Van Der Pol

#64. I can't change the way I'm made. I'm a performer, a singer, a werewolf, a sinner.

Maggie Stiefvater

#65. As an actor and as a performer, I'm very much aware of the fact that my job is to change both physically and emotionally and that was what hurt the most - the fact that people were judging me based on nothing.

Jamie Campbell Bower

#66. You know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he'll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.

Philip Seymour Hoffman

#67. I'm growing as an actor and performer every week.

Allison Holker

#68. I'm a performer. We don't retire.

Robert Goulet

#69. I think a performer should do his work and then shut up.

Richard Widmark

#70. Maybe there's just sexuality, and it's bendable and unpredictable, like a circus performer ( ... )

David Levithan

#71. Once I started performing I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life. But you have to work really hard to be a performer.

Melanie Fiona

#72. Songs suffer at the mercy of the performer.

Jo Stafford

#73. Television is great but for me, as a performer, nothing compares to a live theatre show.

Bruce Forsyth

#74. The one mentality I've always tried to have is that no matter what stage in your career that you are in as a musician or a performer or a songwriter or whatever, there's always more to learn.

Nick Jonas

#75. You get callbacks, and they either give it to what they call a 'name' performer, or they decide to go in an entirely different direction.

Tanya Fischer

#76. You can either be on the stage, just a performer, just going through the lines ... or you can be outside it, and know how the script works, where the scenery hangs, and where the trapdoors are.

Terry Pratchett

#77. Broadway has changed tremendously from the early days when the shows were referred to as musical comedies. Musical Theater is now a more expanded art form. Back then, singer/actors were not the norm. From the 60's to now, it is necessary to do it all to be a consummate Broadway performer.

Betty Buckley

#78. As a young performer, I didn't know that you can have a great time playing someone in terrible crisis. The more you know it's not real, the deeper you can go into it. And the easier it is to let it go when it's done.

Claire Danes

#79. Who you are as a performer is one thing, but when you're making records, you're dealing with musicians' tastes, their goals, their wants, their needs, everyone's individual pride.

Scott Weiland

#80. What the translator - myself in particular - does is not comparable to what the Homeric performer was doing.

Robert Fitzgerald

#81. It would be difficult to have any unfulfilled ambitions because I don't have any ambitions. I've never been that kind of performer.

John Hurt

#82. I loved all fantasy, and I always thought that the ideal job as a performer and an entertainer would be to take on a mythical character, you know? Make someone up. Give them a voice, a mannerism, whatever. I always thought that that was the coolest way to do.

Erica Cerra

#83. I think as a standup performer you have to feel the audience. So the audience kind of dictates what they get, you know?

Pauly Shore

#84. My belief is that the music is always stronger than the performer: there is always something new, something we learn, whether at a performance or during a rehearsal.

Helene Grimaud

#85. You can't just try to be a performer. It's in your DNA. I really believe that it's either what you are or it's not at all.

Sandra Bernhard

#86. Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.

Ted Williams

#87. The way that music is approached in the temple is very call and response; it breaks down that barrier between performer and audience.

Taraka Larson

#88. I don't get on stage and give a social diatribe. I am a performer and an entertainer.

Pete Wentz

#89. He has all those different aspects to him, so I can more or less decide as a performer how I'm going to deliver a line in a particular scene, or play a particular scene in total.

Paul Darrow

#90. It takes about 6 hours of practice a day for quite a few years to become a professional juggler. I started when I was 14 and that discipline has helped me immensely as a performer.

Jeff Raz

#91. I have been a performer for as long as I can remember. I performed in Sunday school and church plays.

Adriane Lenox

#92. I've always called myself a writer/performer, not an actor because I basically write what I perform.

John Cleese

#93. I was a Green Day guy because the first DVD I bought was Green Day's 'Bullet In A Bible,' the live album. That really empowered me to be not just a drummer but a performer. It's a really crucial part of why I wanted to be in a band.

Ashton Irwin

#94. I have thought about some kind of musical involving my music. That would be kind of interesting. I have thought of it in that way, as a creator of something, not so much a performer. So that's in my head.

Steve Martin

#95. I like performing because it's direct contact with live people. I write a good deal of the time but that's introspective creation rather than interaction.

Oliver

#96. I love my stuff - you're not supposed to say that. But because I'm performer as well as a writer, I'm constantly interacting with my own work. I always get to find these little secrets that I left for myself, little notes - I find them all over the scores.

Jason Robert Brown

#97. I am a performer. I go on stage and make a fool of myself.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

#98. Find me any performer anywhere who isn't egocentric. You'd better believe you're good, or you've got no business being out there.

Johnny Carson

#99. All I want to do is be onstage. A performer needs to perform.

David Hasselhoff

#100. A good stunt has to have both style and substance. It's a combination of impact and notoriety, the element of danger, technical execution, and the skill of the stunt performer.

Steve Truglia