The next time a former child star is in the news, look at the age at which he or she started performing. Then imagine making a life-changing decision at that age. Chances are good he or she wasn't the one who made it.
The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.
No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others; or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.
There has to be an interaction of musicians on stage. Otherwise I feel too alone up there. When performing is really good, when it really works, maybe once every 15 shows, it's very special, and you realize that's why you do it.
The whole kiss-and-tell thing is a negative approach that often happens in a World Cup. We will see negative stories about the players and it can affect their confidence and the overall performance of the national team on the pitch, let alone the bid...
When I write, I'm sort of old-fashioned in the sense that I like to write something that I feel I could just perform alone, obviously, because I do that a lot in concert.
I really would love to do a piece like Julia Roberts or Charlize Theron in 'Erin Brockovich' or 'North Country.' They were both so amazing and so inspiring. I would love to touch someone in the way their performances touched me.
When I performed at 'Open Mic U.K.' I had this connection with the audience that I'd never felt before, and I loved it. It was my first big thing, and looking out into the crowd... was just amazing.
So I won an Oscar. It's amazing. I've got that for the rest of my life for a performance I am proud of. It nearly killed me. I am really proud of the film. That's it, moving on.
What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.
Whereas fiction is a continual discovery of what one wants to say, what one feels, what one means, and is, in that sense, a performance art, biography requires different skills - research and organization.
Performance is there, and if you are not there in that moment it happened, it just stays in the memory. It's so immaterial and something this immaterial is very difficult to collect. Its difficult to buy, its how we can buy immaterial art.
Although all the good arts serve to draw man's mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure.
It's kind of an art, going out and performing. I'd like fans to remember me as a guy who would go out and entertain them, give them quality matches, and not just the same old garbage every week.
I have been performing in the street for more than 50 years: magic for basically 60 years, and the high wire 45 years. The beauty of it is that it's never the same. It's never easy. And yet, part of my art is to make it look easy.
Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight of hand figure in the history of the art, rarely performed. But he invented magic and had an enormous influence on the whole range of sleight of hand. And so often, the magic he was doing was to fool other magicians.
Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.
I'm into sincerity in music and sincerity in art. If it doesn't feel true, I don't want to do it. Things that are too dramatic scare me. I think that's why I don't always fit into the world of performing arts.
The old agility was still present and the passion was undeniable, but it was the wobbling of the gut, the puffing of the cheeks and the profuse sweating that lent the performance its true magic.
Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
He is the completed Man who, from his completeness, performs, with his Mastership, the work of a slave.
