Quotes on Audience

I still get a little nervous before performing. You don't want to forget a lyric; you don't want to make a mistake. I still get butterflies. You can try to judge an audience, but you can only really judge things by the applause.

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it.

I never want to make the kind of film whose impact ends when the audience leaves the cinema.

I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself.

When I was younger, all I cared about was what people thought of me and my films. Now I care less about catering, hand-serving, hand-feeding the audience. I've gotten to the point now in my life where I'm serving myself.

As a filmmaker, I believe in trying to make movies that invite the audience to be part of the film; in other words, there are some films where I'm just a spectator and am simply observing from the front seat. What I try to do is draw the audience into the film and have them participate in what's happening onscreen.

I like any and all of my associations with music: writing, playing, and listening. We write and play from our perspective, and the audience listens from its perspective. If and when we agree, I am lucky.

I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice.

The audience today has heard every joke. They know every plot. They know where you're going before you even start. That's a tough audience to surprise, and a tough audience to write for. It's much more competitive now, because the audience is so much more - I want to say sophisticated.

It's my job to motivate the audience to believe. I have to get them to suspend their judgment in favor of involvement.

I've always tried to make movies that pull the audience out of their seats... I want audiences to be transported.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

I know there are people who don't like their audience or like the experience of being recognized or celebrated, but my audience has been very good - they don't bother me and when they do contact me it's usually on the nicest possible terms.

I always knew that if I was ever going to perform something that I wrote in front of an audience, I was going to do the thing I most like to experience as an audience member, which is to be tricked.

One of the things that touches me most when I play for an audience is that although we may be unable to communicate in words or have diametrically opposed views on hot-button issues, while the music sounds we can be at peace, we can be friends. The vibrations that fill an auditorium have no passports, and they unite ears when hearts may be divided.

When the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written.

I'm a great audience. I cry very easily. I suspend disbelief in two seconds.

I hate to lull the audience into letting them think that something is something. It's always fun to defy expectations.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time, and falls flat on his face… I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else’s. That’s a difficult statement to live up to, but then I’ve always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them are there.

I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.