Quotes on Performance

There's got to be a backbone, there's got to be a skeleton to the whole way I perform, but you never want to hit the same note twice during a performance, I think. I think it's always got to be fresh so it doesn't bore me, and I always want to go out on edge.

Author: Casey Abrams

When we get the final hardware, the performance is just going to skyrocket.

Author: J Allard

The thing that's characteristic of my performance is that I literally do drag the whole studio onto the stage.

Author: Laurie Anderson

Sometimes when I see a performance that really takes me, I struggle. How can I express this to this person, I want this person to know how I felt. I want to get this across, and it's not very easy.

Author: John Astin

An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise.

Author: Red Auerbach

What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition.

Author: Carl Bach

I always wanted, and still aspire, to be something more than just one thing, just one performance.

Author: Kevin Bacon

I know that I'm never as good or bad as any single performance. I've never believed my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Author: Charles Barkley

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Author: Charles Barkley

Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.

Author: John Barlow

Reading should be a repeat performance.

Author: John Barton

An emotional performance is usually more instinctive to an actor.

Author: Alan Bates

A lawyer's performance in the courtroom is responsible for about 25 percent of the outcome; the remaining 75 percent depends on the facts.

Author: Melvin Belli

I think the lawyers are such incredible actors. Can you imagine the performance they have to do every day?

Author: Monica Bellucci

Debra Winger doesn't let anything interfere with her performance, which is the way it should be.

Author: Tom Berenger

I think these awards are always nice for a player but they also reflect well on the club. It shows that Arsenal's performance have been noted all around the world and it helps by having so many good players around me.

Author: Dennis Bergkamp

Inside was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.

Author: Shelley Berman

The Steve Allen Sunday night show had the right to two options after my first performance.

Author: Shelley Berman

The most memorable performance was my appearance in concert in Carnegie Hall. The first standup to do so.

Author: Shelley Berman

I like the energy of live performance.

Author: Sandra Bernhard

Before every performance, I think I am about to keel over.

Author: Brenda Blethyn

The only thing you owe the public is a good performance.

Author: Humphrey Bogart

All you owe the public is a good performance.

Author: Humphrey Bogart

I have a chef who makes sure that I'm getting the right amounts of carbs, proteins and fats throughout the day to keep me at my max performance level.

Author: Barry Bonds

Actors should be overheard, not listened to, and the audience is 50 percent of the performance.

Author: Shirley Booth

Drugs won't enhance your performance.

Author: Morgan Brittany

Let your performance do the thinking.

Author: Charlotte Bronte

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.

Author: Lindsey Buckingham

Good performance is about the capacity to focus and concentrate.

Author: Betty Buckley

Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.

Author: Jimmy Buffett

The candidates before you know that the IFP has set up a system of deployed IFP national and provincial leaders who are not only monitoring the performance of candidates during these elections but will also do so after these elections.

Author: Mangosuthu Buthelezi

I accept that responsibility and ask only that I be judged by my performance as its chief executive.

Author: Jane Byrne

As the director of an opera, it is my responsibility to unify the style of the particular performance, but one can certainly approach the piece from different points of view. That's what makes it interesting and keeps it alive.

Author: Sarah Caldwell

You can lose in cinema too if you don't put on a good performance.

Author: Eric Cantona

From protecting our natural resources to providing maritime security and national defense, the Coast Guard's duties are broad in scope, and the performance of those duties has never been more important.

Author: Russ Carnahan

So what this is is us, our personalities refined down on to a stage performance. In other words, the way we play is the end product of the way we live - we live in the cities, you see.

Author: Alice Cooper

The real secret of magic lies in the performance.

Author: David Copperfield

One's performance is often heightened by the brilliance and generosity of other actors.

Author: Cyril Cusack

I think it hurt my performance because I stopped being me. That won't ever happen again.

Author: Christopher Darden

Second of all, I don't think Wall Street is doing what it's supposed to be doing, even after the shameful performance of the last two years. They're are not allocating capital.

Author: Howard Dean

I don't think of Storefront Hitchcock or Stop Making Sense as documentaries, I think of them more as performance films.

Author: Jonathan Demme

When you go out onto the stage, all the preparation has to be forced into your subconscious. For the moment of the performance, we all have to return to a new level of unconsciousness. All the reflection and all the doubts have to be laid aside before you start.

Author: Dietrich Dieskau

If I produce it, I will stage it as a performance. A small audience will be invited; rehearsals of the sections will be done in the mornings, and those sections will be recorded in the afternoons.

Author: Bill Dixon

Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.

Author: William Douglas

With NOAH, you can create some stunning, yet original soundscapes. Therefore, as a performance tool, it really comes into its own because you can make one single performance which has a lot of detail.

Author: Geoff Downes

Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the "naturals," the ones who somehow know how to teach.

Author: Peter Drucker

I wanted to make a classical piece that was actually designed to be a CD, not designed for performance.

Author: Anne Dudley

I like working with an actor who doesn't do the oneupmanship. One who has no trick and gives a true, honest performance.

Author: Erik Estrada

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

Author: Jimmy Fallon

I was the worst extra, I was 'that' guy. I was the guy on the phone trying to get the Oscar for best extra - for best background performance.

Author: Jon Favreau

A total commitment is paramount to reaching the ultimate in performance.

Author: Tom Flores

I'm much more energetic now; you might say live performance is my mission.

Author: John Fogerty

The kindest word to describe my performance in school was Sloth.

Author: Harrison Ford

I've been onstage once for one performance with four days' rehearsal.

Author: Anna Friel

Then certainly for a musician timing becomes something that is immediately accessible as a concept, because it's a necessity in ones everyday performance.

Author: Robert Fripp

The strongest results were in Florida and Texas. In just one year in a Texas charter school, an average student gained 7 percentile points in math and 8 percentile points in reading, while Florida charter schools improved student performance by 6 percentile points.

Author: Maggie Gallagher

As far as performance, the roar of the crowd, the smell of the greasepaint no I don't feel that.

Author: Peter Garrett

Performance is your reality. Forget everything else.

Author: Harold Geneen

Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Nonperformance can always be explained away.

Author: Harold Geneen

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

Author: Harold Geneen

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Author: Edward Gibbon

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

Author: Johann Goethe

An announcer is only as good as yesterday's performance.

Author: Curt Gowdy

So much depends on the performance, and here you are also tied up in the emotion the game evokes.

Author: David Gower

Look at Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster: It's an incredible performance.

Author: Taylor Hackford

I try to get the best performance an actor can give.

Author: Taylor Hackford

I went to a performance of 'The Crucible' at the Guthrie when I was a sophomore in high school, and I knew right away that that's what I wanted to do.

Author: John Hawkes

I'm not saying that more performance wouldn't be better - all these technologies are going to get better - that's the difference between first generation and second generation.

Author: Trip Hawkins

To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.

Author: Rutherford Hayes

The voters reward good performance. So, I'm going to go out and focus, if I become the governor, to do the very best job I can as governor. The rest of it will take care of itself.

Author: Dave Heineman

Some books claim I have already clocked up a century of Grands Prix, but let me put the record straight. Australia will be my 100th start, and I aim to mark the milestone with a cracking performance. It could even be celebrated with a victory.

Author: Damon Hill

Nobody can give a good performance unless the authors and composers have written a good part, a fact which is often overlooked.

Author: Judy Holliday

The eating of burning brimstone is an entirely fake performance.

Author: Harry Houdini

The world is crawling with authors touring now. They're like performance artists.

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Nobody has milked one performance better than me - and I'm damned proud of it.

Author: Bruce Jenner

Good directing is about getting the performance to be just what's right for the movie.

Author: Roland Joffe

A performance is only as good as the audience you are playing to. A lot of times you feed off of the audience, and we always try to give them all we've got and sometimes you don't get a lot back, but we've never been dead whenever we've performed.

Author: Kelly Jones

Nobody has ever said anything about Marion Jones every using performance-enhancing drugs and they never will.

Author: Marion Jones

I think it killed the performance on a lot of the systems in the Labs for years because everyone had their own copy of it, but it wasn't being shared, and so they wasted huge amounts of memory back when memory was expensive.

Author: Bill Joy

I think you can really tell a good actor if you can put a camera on them and they can just talk and emote and react and you don't have to keep cutting away from them, because they are the language and the behavior. It's all a tour-de-force performance.

Author: Sally Kirkland

Secular artists see themselves with performance; they are more self involved, presentational.

Author: Boris Kodjoe

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.

Author: Leo Kottke

We all have levels of performance.

Author: Angela Lansbury

We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm.

Author: Franz Liszt

I still get really nervous, though, before each performance. It kind of hits about 15 minutes before we go onstage - sometimes I don't even want to go on. But once I'm onstage I'm fine.

Author: Alison Lohman

I'm on performance enhancing drugs, so I may cause drowsiness.

Author: Jay London

The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.

Author: Bela Lugosi

Denzel Washington invoked confidence. When you have confidence, you can do anything. And that's what happened. I learned about being honest and keeping it true, keeping it true in my performance.

Author: Derek Luke

To pay 60 musicians for rehearsal and performance is quite something, and I decided I wouldn't be able to handle that kind of situation financially again, unless somebody else was taking care of that end of it.

Author: Chuck Mangione

I made many studio albums and I think the danger of studio recording is that if you do not watch out, you come out with a perfectly sterile performance.

Author: Chuck Mangione

One of my side strange abilities is to hear a good song, no matter how it's being performed. Even if you get a bad performance, I can still hear that there's a good song.

Author: Manfred Mann

So, sometimes, when I'm not happy with my performance and I have to think, I will think in English.

Author: Sophie Marceau

Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality.

Author: Ralph Marston

No one will ever argue that someone could have played Helen Keller better than Patty Duke. It was an incredibly demanding role and I don't think anyone can argue that it was a false performance.

Author: Richard Masur

I had a flair for comedy and could give a sustained performance.

Author: Jessie Matthews

It is strange how your understanding of a play changes. It normally happens after a performance and you suddenly think, 'So that's what that line really means' - it's like a light going on.

Author: Richard McCabe

I take the longest to get ready of anyone. I've been going in two hours before the show every performance.

Author: Rue McClanahan

One only has to look at the performance of the economy to understand how it shapes the perspective of America's youth about military service.

Author: John McHugh

I consider that my best performance ever was as Peer Gynt.

Author: Leo McKern

Jackie considered his resurrection, the world's best return performance.

Author: Audrey Meadows

When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows.

Author: Robert Moog

I remember the difficulty we had in the beginning replacing magnetic cores in memories and eventually we had both cost and performance advantages. But it wasn't at all clear in the beginning.

Author: Gordon Moore

I've done scenes in films that I felt like the performance was better in certain takes, but they couldn't use them because it didn't match what the person was doing when they came around and the camera was on them.

Author: David Morse

I am certainly suffering from a modicum of performance anxiety.

Author: George Murray

My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise.

Author: Richard Nixon

The adrenaline of a live performance is unlike anything in film or theater. I can see why it's so addictive.

Author: Gwyneth Paltrow

The Dark Side of the Moon has flash - the true flash that comes from the excellence of a superb performance.

Author: Alan Parsons

When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality.

Author: Joe Paterno

Sayles could pull a performance out of a dog. I'm serious. He was just amazing. The world could fall apart and he remained on neutral.

Author: Elizabeth Pena

Even though I don't feel I need approval, it's still important to me to give a good performance. I'm hard on myself.

Author: Michelle Pfeiffer

If I had a bad performance in a particular leotard, I threw it in the trash.

Author: Mary Retton

Did you know I staged the first performance in America of At the Hawk's Well?

Author: Kenneth Rexroth

A particular shot or way of moving the ball can be a player's personal signature, but efficiency of performance is what wins the game for the team.

Author: Pat Riley

Your performance gets you promoted. It doesn't matter if you're brown, back or white.

Author: Geraldo Rivera

I wouldn't do nudity in films. For me, personally... To act with my clothes on is a performance; to act with my clothes off is a documentary.

Author: Julia Roberts

My guess is many top athletes, distance runners included, use performance-enhancing drugs, enough so that the problem must be tackled.

Author: Bill Rodgers

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

Author: Jean Rousseau

He who is most slow in making a promise is the most faithful in performance of it.

Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the President and do wonders for your performance.

Author: Donald Rumsfeld

I started off in a small theatre performance company and worked my way into commercials.

Author: Devon Sawa

No, we've been performing our old songs a little differently each performance.

Author: Fred Schneider

It is essential that we put an end to steroid abuse and set a better example for aspiring young athletes to follow, so that some day, when they make it in the All Star Game, it will be because of their own natural talents, and not because of a performance enhancing product.

Author: Jim Sensenbrenner

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

Author: William Shakespeare

Every superior personality, and every superior performance, has, for the average of mankind, something mysterious.

Author: Georg Simmel

An entertainer should in his public performance keep himself out of any controversy, political or otherwise.

Author: Kate Smith

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.

Author: Maggie Smith

The thing about performance, even if it's only an illusion, is that it is a celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.

Author: Sydney Smith

I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that's the most fun.

Author: Steven Soderbergh

The next day I was in my school's production of All My Sons. This was the performance where I realized something was happening between me and the audience that I hadn't recognized before.

Author: Kevin Spacey

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

Author: Terence Stamp

When we contemplate the heroes of Christianity, and compare our feeble efforts with their astonishing performance and self devotion, we should fall into despair, were there not a few softening features, by which they are brought back to the ranks of humanity.

Author: John Strachan

Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.

Author: Gloria Stuart

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I don't have a second to be bored or take anything for granted.

Author: Kiefer Sutherland

The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally.

Author: Twyla Tharp

Restoration I did because I really loved e novel and I like Michael Hoffman, who directed it, but it wasn't a really challenging part for me. I'm not critical of the film: I just don't think I gave a very interesting performance.

Author: David Thewlis

All I have is my performance, I try to feed in the best of everything that I could possibly do into those 90 minutes and to make a live entertainment show out of it.

Author: George Thorogood

Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance.

Author: Michael Tippett

You have your structure, but within it, it gets fuller and you can highlight other parts of the performance.

Author: Marisa Tomei

Nutrition is also a valuable component that can help athletes both protect themselves and improve performance.

Author: Bill Toomey

I didn't really have an act per se - a theatrical performance, as opposed to just: here I am, folks, and you're all supposed to be dead quiet while I sing eight or nine songs, then get off the stage.

Author: Mel Torme

It wasn't just about flashing lights and pinball machines blowing up and things like that. It was about using encores, bringing back the good songs and using techniques that I knew about from rock performance.

Author: Pete Townshend

Firms would be given initial entitlements to gross markup on the basis of past performance. These entitlements would be transferable and a market in them would be developed.

Author: William Vickrey

It was more freeing, mainly because he's so free anyway. He just is in his performance. So to mimic someone doing a free performance, well, that's pretty freeing within itself.

Author: Michael Welch

An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises.

Author: Mae West

I have never taken any substance to enhance my performance.

Author: Kelli White

What we've seen this season is that if something that will enhance performance is available, some players will indulge... unless the penalty is an absolute deterrent.

Author: Michael Wilbon

I say this quite deliberately, this is the finest Shakespearean performance I've seen.

Author: Donald Wolfit

The console games, as they come out with this new generation, will have a temporary advantage in price performance, but there are still many things you can do on a PC, more conveniently than you can do on a console machine.

Author: Will Wright

What kind of morons do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?

Author: Al Yankovic

It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance.

Author: James Young