Quotes on Performance

I think of myself as a performance artist. I hate being called a pop star. I hate that.

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.

The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.

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.

In performance capture roles, it's not a committee of animators that author the role, it's the actor. I think that's a significant thing for people to understand.

Research shows that women at that mid level tend to get promoted based on performance, and men tend to get promoted based on potential.

This idea that my work is about hip-hop is a little reductive. What I'm interested in is the performance of masculinity, the performance of ethnicity, and how they intermingle across cultures.

In a live performance, it's a collaboration with the audience; you ride the ebb and flow of the crowd's energy. On television, you don't have that.

The great thing about performance capture is you can go off, and then, without changing costume, you can become another character.

Sexuality and gender don't change anyone's performance on the court.

The major rock instruments and classical instruments were designed for performance, for sharing the music with an audience, and then later people put microphones on them and recorded them. But for electronic music, the opposite was true - they're designed in laboratories, and later, we tried to put them on stage.

Be honest about how you approach failure. Don't just be critical of yourself, because that can be self-serving. Approach it honestly, assess your performance, and assess the areas where you have fallen short. Correct them and move on. Don't dwell on it. Don't hold on to it.

If you are not moved by the character, no amount of CGI will give you a performance that is emotionally engaging or devastating - what a live-action performance does.

First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.

For me, the intellect is always the guide but not the goal of the performance. Three things have to be coordinated, and not one must stick out. Not too much intellect because it can become scholastic. Not too much heart because it can become schmaltz. Not too much technique because you become a mechanic.

We make too much out of past performance, and it's very misleading to investors. It causes them to move money around. They buy a fund that's hot and then it turns cold as all hot funds eventually do. And then they get out. Well, buying at the high and selling at the low isn't going to leave you a satisfied shareholder, right?

If you see your company culture as a family, you don't want to fire someone just because their short-term performance is not good. If you do, even the people on your team who are excellent performers will look at what's going on and say, 'Someday you might fire me too.' You'll lose everyone's trust.

I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people.

What we can control is our performance and our execution, and that's what we're going to focus on.

Helping set the day's agenda and deciding what we used and editing it, that was a journalistic high point. I liked reporting as well. Just doing the news - the live performance - wasn't important. Working on the desk was.

The performance of international institutions will be symptomatic of the domestic political priorities of influential member states. International institutions don't really have a life and a mind of their own.