Quotes About Onstage

#1. It's me, it's my habit to perform live onstage every four, five years. In Italy, it's my habit.

Roberto Benigni

#2. When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.

Nick Cave

#3. I'm actually relaxed onstage. Totally relaxed. It's nice. I feel relaxed in the studio too. I know whether something feels right. If it doesn't, I know how to fix it. Everything has to be in place and if it is you feel good, you feel fulfilled.

Michael Jackson

#4. When we're onstage, it's like mind reading: we're on the same page.

Guy Picciotto

#5. But I think what made me go into theater was seeing my mother onstage. The first thing she did was Mrs. Frank in 'The Diary of Anne Frank.' The second thing she did was a play about Freud called 'The Far Country.' She played a paralyzed woman in Vienna who goes to see Freud.

Tony Kushner

#6. One time I happened to use the word 'denigrate' onstage, and it didn't get any reaction. So as I continued my act, the left side of my brain was fast-forwarding to see if I had any other big words coming up.

Bob Newhart

#7. Onstage, even though you're here together with the other actor, face-to-face, playing out the scene, you also have that other ear pointed out toward the audience and how they're listening. That informs a lot.

Uzo Aduba

#8. A lot of the audience know that magic tricks are largely sleight of hand stuff, but they're intrigued by the mind stuff. They understand some of the principles behind it ... but they're confused by how it's all mixed together onstage, which is good for me.

Keith Barry

#9. A steamer is like an inhaler, so you can inhale this oil or frankincense or eucalyptus. Before I go onstage, I spend half an hour taking in that steam, and it saves my life!

Rita Ora

#10. I never studied anything, really. I didn't study the drums. I joined bands and made all the mistakes onstage.

Ringo Starr

#11. Baseball players practice, runners practice, so how can you practice being funny? You get up onstage. You train as an improviser, playing make-believe, using the vernacular of improvisation, saying 'yes and' to other people's ideas, making statements.

Ali Farahnakian

#12. I get terrible butterflies. Before I go onstage, I'll have to freak out for five minutes. I scream. It seems to help!

Josh Groban

#13. Your mother is probably right," Dad said. "Social services frowns on drunk ten-year-ols. Besides, when I dropped my drumsticks and puked onstage, it was punk. If you drop your bow and smell like a brewery, it will look gauche. You classical-music people are so snobby that way.

Gayle Forman

#14. I'm happy with the way everyone presents themselves onstage.

Daisy Berkowitz

#15. In underground music, there seems to be this real inability for people to express themselves in any kind of heroic or mythological way. There's this idea that we're all normal joes, and that creating a persona onstage or having schtick is somehow false and misleading and evil.

Ian Svenonius

#16. Once I get out onstage, it's the same sort of basic production that it is anywhere else. But I might be a little bit aware that there might be people I know out there, who wondered where I was.

Phoebe Snow

#17. The play passed by quickly, and yet it seemed to George as though she had been onstage since the beginning of time, as if she were born there and had only now found herself where she had always been.

Alex Gino

#18. I remember my first moment onstage was at a 4-H contest at the Pratville Junior High School cafeteria auditorium around 1965. I had my first electric, a Silvertone with the amp built into the case, and I won first prize.

Tommy Shaw

#19. I like to wear dresses and skirts when I go onstage because the attitude that I have is, 'I'm so excited to introduce myself to you.' And I want to be wearing what I'd be wearing to a date or a dinner party.

Jenny Slate

#20. 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.

Jason Aldean

#21. It's sort of a feeling of power onstage. It's really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have some effect later on. I don't really think it's power ... it's the goodness.

Robert Plant

#22. 'Saturday Night Live' is a very particular beast. What it celebrates are individuals who can stand out. I did good work there, but going onstage and saying, 'Hey! Hey! Look at me! Aren't I funny?' - that just wasn't my instinct.

Chris Parnell

#23. My goal was becoming the next David Copperfield. I learned how to be a performer by emulating him as a kid - his formula of just talking to people onstage, being free to improvise, being charming and witty with a crowd, together with great, beautiful magic.

Michael Carbonaro

#24. My background is a small town with no movie theater. So ... I always pictured myself onstage. I went to acting school and learned all the skills. I left early because I did my first movie and discovered that I really loved the minimalistic work with the camera.

Franka Potente

#25. It's hard 'coz you have got different time zones; you can't sleep and y'know, it's boring way for the show to happen, but you do off the stage. Y'know, onstage it's all better.

Kerry King

#26. Onstage, I find absolutely nothing but exhilaration in not talking.

Teller

#27. I have a big ego, but I don't buy into it. I can't live off the ego. It's an honor that I get to be that guy onstage. It's not something I earned.

Steven Tyler

#28. I go onstage and I talk, and I remember what I'm saying, and I track it.

Kevin Hart

#29. How much more can you give? Other than, literally, open-heart surgery onstage? Not much. But the only cure you have right now is the honesty of going, this is who you are. I know who I am.

Robin Williams

#30. I do secret stand-up shows around New York. I announce and tweet this to nobody - I get onstage and I do a quick five minutes.

Questlove

#31. I used to be more involved with every aspect of everything onstage. I'm way more relaxed now. It feels like anything can happen.

Prince

#32. The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

#33. I don't believe you should stay onstage until people are begging you to get off. I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more.

Quentin Tarantino

#34. When I chose to do 'Carrie,' I never had done anything on camera before. I was always onstage, so everything surprised me. Just going on set and walking into a makeup trailer and seeing Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore - 'Wow, I am part of this ensemble.'

Ansel Elgort

#35. 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.

Andy Serkis

#36. Everyone's got their problems and their demons, but when we get onstage and play as five, that really all goes away, and that's really all I look at.

Steven Tyler

#37. It's almost embarrassing how well-behaved I was, which is probably why I do things like spit water on myself onstage as an adult.

Karen O

#38. I don't laugh so much at jokes and premises as I do at a guy who goes onstage and starts twitching and acting funny.

Harland Williams

#39. For years, I was stuck behind a keyboard rig. When I started playing guitar onstage, it was a bit of a release - not to be stuck in one spot the whole night. It's really enjoyable having the freedom to move around. You just have to remember to end up somewhere near a microphone.

Martin Gore

#40. I'm not saying I'll never go solo - never is a long time - but I've always been onstage with someone else. That way, you're in it together, and you can feel, together, when the songs are right.

Alison Mosshart

#41. I wish I had a really cool, esoteric answer, but what the process is to me is going onstage night after night after night after night until I get a new hour. And then once that hour is solidified and recorded, I move on.

Patton Oswalt

#42. I really do feel now that the way I dress onstage and for work is a true reflection of my own sense of style as well.

Rachel Stevens

#43. Look at Greg Jbara! I've watched him work for years, always switching. He's literally a different human being when he's onstage in 'Billy Elliot.' That's the fun of what we do.

Will Chase

#44. The stuff I do and say onstage I can do easily. As a performer, that comes easily. But being social offstage, it's not easy for me.

Margaret Cho

#45. I knew that I could be more creative onstage, to state my own case and deliver my own interpretation of the role much more aggressively than in the recording studio.

Kiri Te Kanawa

#46. 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.

Loudon Wainwright III

#47. I sort of write onstage. I'll throw an idea out there, like Home Depot, and just start talking about it.

Harland Williams

#48. When onstage, I always try to take my audience through as many emotions as I possibly can. I want them to go from laughter to tears, be shocked and surprised and walk out the door with a renewed sense of themselves - and maybe a smile.

Reba McEntire

#49. I have a lot of experience in the studio, performing onstage, talking to an audience. I learned most of that stuff when I was performing with my mom.

Skylar Grey

#50. I still do one song by myself onstage. it gives people the extremely personal thing where it's just me on guitar. But, I think the songs are better as a band. I think with all of the extra little hooks and backing vocals, it just adds to what my initial idea was.

Butterfly Boucher

#51. Whenever I'm onstage, I try my best not to think that I'm performing. It's simply another part of my day.

Bobby McFerrin

#52. Eric Clapton always wanted to come out onstage with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder.

Neil Innes

#53. There's always been an element of 'right time, right place' to Nine Inch Nails. When we stepped onstage at Woodstock '94, I could sense it. I get goosebumps thinking about it now. Like, 'I don't know how we did this, but somehow we've touched a nerve.'

Trent Reznor

#54. There are only so many hours you can sit on the bus and watch TV or play basketball or whatever we do to pass the time before we go out onstage.

Kenny Chesney

#55. I know I stand visibly onstage, but my function is still unseen, because I rarely see the immediate results of what I am saying or doing or writing.

Larry Norman

#56. Being onstage is a way of harnessing your vulnerability and using the adrenaline to be creative. It's a very vulnerable place to be - technically, emotionally, and physically - but I love it.

Gary Kemp

#57. People don't know what it's like standing up there onstage, when you have a wall of people smiling at you.

Dave Chappelle

#58. A life being enacted onstage is a thing of utter fascination for me. And acting, it may begin out of vanity, but you hope that it's taken over by something else. I hope I've climbed over the vanity hurdle.

Joseph Wiseman

#59. You have to realize, when you're a comedian, that you have to have a thick skin. And trust me, being onstage in front of people is already difficult enough. Somebody's personal attack in an email is not as hard as getting onstage.

Dane Cook

#60. I was Aladdin, and then I was Captain Von Trapp from 'Sound Of Music' when I was 7 or 8, and then King Arthur. I was always the lead. I've always enjoyed being onstage, acting obnoxious, being someone that wasn't me, hiding behind a character.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse

#61. If I go onstage, I want to give people everything they want and more. I'll wash their car for them on their way out.

Trent Reznor

#62. I'm getting to a point where everything is becoming streamlined in my life. I'm learning how to stand onstage for two hours and play in front of thousands of people as if I am completely in the moment every moment.

John Mayer

#63. Whenever I realize I'm being a goofball, I write it down. When I release the joke onstage, I love watching the effect it has on the audience. No one wants to see someone talk who takes themselves too seriously.

Billy Gardell

#64. I'm sort of anti-Aristotelian. I want to get an entire life onstage while conveying a sense of how time feels, how unstoppable it is, and how we don't really know what's going on because as we're trying to weave, it's weaving us.

Richard Greenberg

#65. I love being onstage. I love the relationship with the audience. I love the letting go, the sense of discovery, the improvising.

Stephen Colbert

#66. I was onstage with Menudo since I was 12 years old. To us, the most successful one was the guy with the most fans. If you moved your hips and the girls screamed, you were getting it right. Who wouldn't want to be like Elvis or Jim Morrison!

Ricky Martin

#67. Approval isn't necessary. It's nice when you get it, but it's not going to stop us from being who we are. I mean, if I'd have listened to approval, I'd never have made it one day onstage. But to be criticized, if there's validity, as upset as you are, you can learn from it.

Jared Leto

#68. I don't know if I change my act from century to century. Sometimes I'm onstage doing imitations and references to people who have been dead for 50 years.

Gilbert Gottfried

#69. Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already.

Mikhail Baryshnikov

#70. I remember being onstage once when I didn't have fear: I got so scared I didn't have fear that it brought on an anxiety attack.

Carly Simon

#71. I'm really clumsy, so I trip and fall a lot. And every time I perform in New York my pants split onstage. That's happened four or five times. Every time, I pull on my mom's jeans as fast as I can, so there we are, standing backstage without our pants on. It's like a curse.

Jessica Simpson

#72. My first joint I smoked onstage in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I smoked my first joint live.

Tommy Bolin

#73. The extremes of who I'd love to be onstage are David Bowie, Prince, and, I don't know, Bjork.

Miguel

#74. I can never tell when something is funny. I just have to do it onstage and find out.

Margaret Cho

#75. Just me onstage with a mike having an intimate relationship with the audience. I don't get nervous for that. I just get excited.

Kevin James

#76. It was a choice of making it or still eating chicken onstage.

John Lennon

#77. The children never connect me with the man onstage when I come out the stage door. The parents spend all their time trying to convince them that I'm Caractacus.

Raul Esparza

#78. All the truly great stand-ups say, 'I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I'm doing my work.' To me, in the end, the surest thing is work.

Patton Oswalt

#79. The most memorable night of The Judy Garland Show for me was the night my mother pulled me out of the audience and sang to me onstage.

Lorna Luft

#80. Doing a piece on film is completely different from doing it onstage.

Samantha Mathis

#81. I don't need the money after 11 years on 'Frasier,' and there aren't that many great roles onstage left for somebody my age. I'm more interested in playing those roles than I am in playing bit parts in movies.

John Mahoney

#82. I find a similarity between performing music onstage and acting - a reality of emotion.

Miyavi

#83. I was always shy and had a huge fear of being onstage.

Colbie Caillat

#84. As a standup performer, I'm onstage, and it's important how the audience is looking at me. I'm looking at whether they're leaning forward or not, those types of things. You read an energy. And it's the same thing in a scene with other actors.

Jerrod Carmichael

#85. I didn't think I could go onstage and play unless I had a beer to loosen up. Well, if it was only one beer to loosen up, I'd probably still be drinking today.

Joe Perry

#86. I just get onstage and sing. I don't think about how I'm going to do it - it's too complicated.

Sarah Vaughan

#87. I thought I was going to be a lot more freaked out by being naked onstage. I think on film I would have been more freaked out, because film is less forgiving. But onstage it's lit so beautifully. It would make my mother look good.

Lorraine Bracco

#88. In my day, in my era, Ralph McDaniels, just being five and being at his block party, you could just got onstage.

Lil' Mama

#89. Onstage I'm the one in control - I'm not at the mercy of how an editor chooses to put the scene together later. I can do things onstage that I would never do in real life. It's very freeing.

Laurie Metcalf

#90. There is nothing - nothing - like writing a great joke and having that joke kill onstage.

Judy Gold

#91. There's no romance in the details [of touring] anymore for me. But as soon as we're walking onstage and until we walk off after the encore, I feel totally alive and completely satisfied with my work.

Drew Holcomb

#92. The first time onstage, a light went on. 'OK, this is my thing. I'm comfortable here. This is my thing.'

Wanda Sykes

#93. I design a lot of things that I wear onstage, but I'm always looking for unique stuff. I like creative things, so anything I can find at a secondhand costume shop to a Helmut Lang store, it doesn't matter - just unique stuff.

Amy Lee

#94. You can poke fun at some pretty difficult circumstances, and it's just a way to pop the bubble. I don't do that thing onstage usually, but offstage sometimes I might.

Brian Regan

#95. I've always enjoyed playing live onstage.

Juice Newton

#96. You know the actor's nightmare is getting up onstage and not being prepared? I think the writer's nightmare is giving a reading and somebody standing up and saying, 'That's not your story.'

Lynn Coady

#97. When I'm on tour, I'm in a new city every single night, and the energy and the crowds and the kids and the screaming and them knowing every single word of my music and being onstage is such an energetic feeling with a big payoff.

Hilary Duff

#98. When I played Lady Day, I took Aba onstage with me as a joke. He started singing - in tune! - and the audience loved it.
Eartha Kitt, when asked what tricks her poodle did.

Eartha Kitt

#99. Since I was three I've been playing the piano. I've been onstage. My mother is an Evangelist and I used to play the piano at her revival meetings.

Nina Simone

#100. I remember walking onstage in the first performance, and something hit me like a brick wall, and I just knew at that moment that this is something I had to do for the rest of my life, and I've never looked back.

Katherine McNamara