These live performance quotes will inspire you. A play (theatre) or musical · A concert, a live performance (typically of music) before an audience.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging live performance quotes, live performance sayings, and live performance proverbs.
Inspirational Live Performance Quotes
- “If you think you can’t, you’re right.” ~ Carol Bartz
- “One of the things I love about music is live performance.” ~ Yo-Yo Ma
- “My live performance, it just comes from feeling an energy and emotion from the crowd. Just going out there and doing my own stuff and being in front of my own people. I love it.” ~ Wiz Khalifa
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“Live performance has always been my thing. It’s my purpose to master and capture the moment every time I have you connected.” ~ Usher
- “I think it’s one of those things about live performance – anything goes, anything can happen, and you have to just be ready and able to roll with the punches.” ~ Sara Bareilles
- “There’s one thing you can’t download and that’s a live performance. And I know how to put on a show, and enjoy performing, and I’ll always have that.” ~ Madonna Ciccone
- “Whether you are a writer, or an actor, or a stage manager, you are trying to express the complications of life through a shared enterprise. That’s what theatre was, always. And live performance shares that with an audience in a specific compact: the play is unfinished unless it has an audience, and they are as important as everyone else.” ~ Lee Hall
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“Nothing beats a live performance. Nothing.” ~ Jonathan Demme
- “Get out of your house and go see some live performance, for God’s sake. There are people creating things just outside your window.” ~ Maria Bamford
- “I’m much more energetic now; you might say live performance is my mission.” ~ John Fogerty
- “For me, the most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance. The very great drawback of recorded sound is the fact that it is always the same. No matter how wonderful a recording is, I know that I couldn’t live with it–even of my own music–with the same nuances forever.” ~ Aaron Copland
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“When you take an energetic song and add it to one of the most energetic live performance set’s you get pure mayhem…which is what the fans want to see!” ~ Machine Gun Kelly
- “You want people to think. You want people to be emotionally moved. And there’s a theory behind that in terms of storytelling. It has been around for thousands of years. And that’s where something like live theater or a live performance is something that is very valuable because you get instant feedback from your audience and you kind of know the things that work and the things that don’t work.” ~ George Lucas
- “My preference is live performance, because you get the feedback. There’s an energy. It’s live theater. That’s why I think actors like that.” ~ Robin Williams
- “The thing I love about live performance the most, is that the doors are closed, the lights are turned down, and the audience has to be reverential to what’s happening onstage.” ~ Cate Blanchett
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“I couldn’t worry about whether I`m gonna make it onstage or not. You can’t. You just gotta do it. And if you do, you do, and if you don’t, you don’t, and then something else happens. That’s the point of the live performance.” ~ Bruce Springsteen
- “Music films are great, but they can never compete with a live performance. Live music is what it is. It’s the whole point. You experience it in the moment.” ~ Jonathan Demme , Live Performance quotes music
- “As music becomes less of a thing–a cylinder, a cassette, a disc–and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again.” ~ David Byrne
- “No matter what, I will always prefer a live performance. Whether it be a play or a musical, or playing music live. As long as it’s live, it’s the best because there’s sort of an immediacy to connection between an audience and a performer, whereas where you do film or television, you’re at the whim of so many different forces.” ~ Darren Criss
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“The adrenaline of a live performance is unlike anything in film or theater. I can see why it’s so addictive.” ~ Gwyneth Paltrow
- “My preference is live performance. Because you get the feedback. There’s an energy. It’s live theater. That’s why I think actors like that. You know, musicians need it, comedians definitely need it. It doesn’t matter what size and what club, whether it’s 30 people in the club or 2,000 in a hall or a theater. It’s live, it’s symbiotic, you need it.” ~ Robin Williams
- “Live performances make music important. Recording is cool and fun, and it’s nice to document the thing you made, but the goal in my mind is to perform.” ~ Dan Deacon
- “Before the whole [music] business was calibrated around the selling of records. I never could have imagined that live performance would become kind of a vortex of the business. It’s such a seismic shift really.” ~ Arthur Fogel
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“It [live performance] is just very difficult. Doing an hour, hour and a half of live standup is an endurance test. You almost have to do it every day to stay upon it.” ~ Steve Martin
- “Check out the albums, … Check out the live performances. That’s the reality of it all. Music is such an energizing thing.” ~ John Mayall
- “The nice thing about live performance is that I’ve never, ever been let down. Partly I’m lucky that my audience self-selects itself. Generally, they know what they’re in for, and generally we all just like each other and get along. But I always find one or two or a dozen really interesting people in the audience who make the show different. And that’s one of the things I really like about performing.” ~ John Hodgman
- “The ephemeral nature of live performance is the part I love most – it’s a monk’s sand painting, carefully constructed, then wiped away in an instant.” ~ Rosanne Cash
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“Three languages – the video, the music and the live performance – are awesome to bring together.” ~ Planningtorock
- “The only difference with wrestling is we’re like a live performance. So we’re feeding off the audience and if they don’t like something, they can let us know immediately.” ~ Adam Cole
- “I do an improv show on Sunday where we have a class, and then afterwards we go and do a live performance in front of an audience.” ~ Nolan Gould
- “When you have performers, there’s the uniqueness of live performance and what performers do in concerts.” ~ Paul Lansky
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“I really love watching the 70s live performance TV series “The Midnight Special” and “The Old Grey Whistle Test”. Those are the best performances you’ve ever seen, and they sound incredible.” ~ Feist
- “I guess I cringe because sometimes I don’t even watch my live performances back. When I edit, it’s this feeling of seeing my mistakes. It’s always a mixture of loving characters, but being the artist that created it and not trying to go too deep in criticizing myself.” ~ Kalup Linzy
- “I’m actually looking for a gallery, but the thing is some galleries just want to show the video work and some are just interested in the 2-D work. It has to be a gallery where I can do the 2-D collages, the video, and live performance, where it’s not this weird conflict, where it can all move forward.” ~ Kalup Linzy
- “To move from a discussion of the early relationship between theatre and television to an examination of the current situation of live performance is to confront the irony that whereas television initially sought to replicate and, implicitly, to replace live theatre, live performance itself has developed since that time toward the replication of the discourse of mediatization.” ~ Philip Auslander
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“I’d gone through periods where I didn’t work live performances for probably seven or eight months at a time.” ~ Johnny Ramistella
- “When I’m preforming a lot I’m aching to get back in the studio but I love live performance. I love trying to think on my feet and be spontaneous. I like doing that in a live show and I do the same thing in the studio.” ~ Joel Plaskett
- “I like the adrenaline of live performance, whatever that is, appearing in front of an audience of any kind, whether it’s one or a hundred or a thousand. It gives you a buzz of adrenaline, its exciting. The thing about that is that you want to make those nerves work for you in terms of an energy that’s appropriate for the part and the performance, and not to distract the people who are watching so that they become nervous for you.” ~ Jared Harris
- “I don’t particularly love live performance of my music. I love writing and recording, but you can’t make money off of that.” ~ Ben Rosenfield
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“The old forms of entertainment are not extinct. Live performances are the pinnacle. If you can something that people want to see live, then you have a great career.” ~ Bette Midler
- “Learn as much as you can about performing. Live theater, improv classes, music, stand-up comedy, dance, anything to make yourself confident and comfortable in front of an audience. It’ll all come in handy when auditioning for producers and performing with other actors. The best voice actors all have a live performance background. And are competent, fearless, incredibly creative actors.” ~ Rob Paulsen
- “I don’t ever want to stick myself in one category. I do really love making movies, but the thing about live performances is you don’t have to wait around. Literally, we’re still waiting to see what the reaction is to the film, so it’s a slower process. But it is enjoyable.” ~ Jim Carrey
- “There’s nothing like watching a live performance of, frankly, anything. You have to make sure that people believe everything is improvised. I could not stress enough how little we [actors] prepare and what small amount of time we put in before these shows.” ~ Amy Poehler
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“Recorded music has always been in a sense promotion for live performance, and some artists have discovered that giving it away is as effective as trying to sell it.” ~ Todd Rundgren
- “I like the energy of live performance.” ~ Sandra Bernhard
- “I used to be a drummer in a band, and I really loved playing the drums, so I look forward to the right opportunity to do that at some point. Maybe even on TV. Every single live performance I’m doing on TV, I want it to be different and unique.” ~ Zedd
- “I think movies are a director’s medium in the end. Theater is the actor’s medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.” ~ Sam Mendes
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“I’m very excited about the resurgence of vinyl which seems to parallel a growing interest in live performance.” ~ Saul Williams
- “We gave up on the idea of trying to make the record a good representation of the live performance.” ~ John Cale
- “From the business point of view—not to overstate it—intellectual property is dead; long live intellectual process. Long live service; long live performance.” ~ Esther Dyson
- “If I think about the way I was drawn into the music, it was much more by recordings than by live performances.” ~ Evan Parker
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“I love the live performances and Las Vegas. I also like making films that are being discovered by another generation. Having been a teen idol of the ’60s is great because you realize you left your generation with a smile and good memories.” ~ Connie Stevens
- “A live performance is the same no matter what genre it is. Wrestling, rock ‘n roll, hosting, acting – it’s the same thing.” ~ Chris Jericho
- “In most cases, my favorite Jethro Tull songs will be determined by how I feel about them as live performance songs, not by the recorded identity.” ~ Ian Anderson
- “He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly, he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn’t for everyone, but for everyone, he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.” ~ Ann Patchett
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“Americans work a long away ahead of themselves because of the size of the place. To make any impact at all you have to promote yourself with live performances ages before a release.” ~ James Taylor
- “Live performance really terrifies me. I haven’t done it, really, in years. I think that’s why I retired from my brief career in stand-up.” ~ Mindy Kaling
- “Every acting gig isn’t the same, every writing job isn’t the same, every live performance isn’t the same – the challenge is the level of difficulty or ease, and that may vary.” ~ Ricky Jay
- “I think opera has gained a kind of glamorous appeal. It’s a live performance that aligns all of the arts, and when it is represented in the media, in film in particular, it is presented as something that is really a special event, whether it’s a great date or something that’s just hugely romantic.” ~ Renee Fleming
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“I love musical theatre because I love doing a live performance eight times a week.” ~ Gareth Gates
- “It’s got to be hard to be a band that’s trading on your 40-year-old hits, where there’s a certain thing that’s expected of you. But that’s why I admire Bob Dylan’s live performances – he’s steadfast about mixing up the songs, not just sticking to his greatest hits, and reinterpreting them to the extent that you really can’t recognize them until halfway through. It’s like, I DARE you to sing along.” ~ Amy Argetsinger
- “I am so excited to perform; I am so ready to perform; I love live performances! I think it’s something so different from a track; live is just so unique and cool because the energy is just so different. I cannot wait to have live performances.” ~ Claudia Lee
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“I love live performance, but I am excited to try my hand at whatever comes my way.” ~ Michael Stahl-David
- “The energy of college football rivals that of a live performance for me. I am an extremely analytical guy and predicting these games is right up my alley, especially with a little luck thrown in. It is even more fun when I am winning and I have to say, I have fared quite well in my predictions.” ~ Rodney Atkins
- “In a sense, I like to think of the live performance as something different than the record, not necessarily looking to exactly recreate the record. Sometimes Matt and I just do duets folk-style. Part of the fun of seeing a live show is having it be different from the way that you hear it in your bedroom or wherever you listen to music.” ~ Zooey Deschanel
