Quotes on Performer

I'm not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together. In fact, everything I do is about the conceptualizing and realization of a piece of work, whether it's the recording or the performance side.

I lived for 15 years in Los Angeles, and I still can't believe that the handsomest man in the world, Cary Grant, and the greatest performer in the world, Fred Astaire, and Johnny Carson, one after another - they were all in my home at different times. I celebrated my 50th birthday with them. Unforgettable.

Every performer I talk to will, with different words, talk about the sanctity of a good standup show, how it can really feel spiritual. When everybody is laughing, fixed on the same thing, you feel like you transcend yourself.

I want my audience to be my friends - that is when they will get the best comedy. If they see me as a performer, they won't get the best show.

To get even realer with you for a second, as a black actor, as a performer of color, I don't know how many more roles like Aaron Burr are gonna come along for me.

My introduction of Whitney was that if there's going to be one performer for the next generation who combined the beauty and lyric phrasing of a Lena Horne with those Gospel fiery roots of an Aretha Franklin, it would be Whitney Houston.

When you first start out in stand-up and, probably, as any performer, you enjoy the attention so much, and even though that hasn't died down on stage, it certainly has satiated whatever was in me that was needing that much attention. When I'm off stage, it's not something that I really need.

When you're a performer, of course you want an audience, but it's very, very different from courting fame.

The constant fear of a performer is to become what is reflected back at you.

My job as a performer is to make sure that whatever happens in a performance lives in somebody else, that it's memorable... If you forget tomorrow what you heard yesterday, there's really not much point in you having been there - or me, for that matter.

If you're performing music that is not who you are or where you're at, it is painful. It's painful for the performer and for the audience.

I don't really like to call myself a brand, and I don't like to think of myself as a brand. I'm a singer, a songwriter, a musician and a performer. And an actress, and all the other things that I do. When you add it all together, some might call it a brand, but that's not my focus.

The high point for me in my career was when Sinatra called me his favourite performer in the Fifties. And I've been sold out ever since.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you've got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.