Hilary Hahn Quotes

I love playing live, I don't like studios all that much. I need the reaction of the audience.

I feel my live shows are my music; everything blossoms from the live shows.

I do understand that onstage there are times when you think, 'I could not be more alive than I am at this moment. I can't do most things in life. This is what I'm for.'

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

I feel like every time I go out, I want to do a good job. I want people to say that he's just as good at stand-up as he is in some of the movies I've seen him in, so I try to do the best every time I go out there.

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.

The best shows I play, I almost don't even remember off the stage.

A live performance is the same no matter what genre it is. Wrestling, rock 'n roll, hosting, acting - it's the same thing.

Onstage, there's no hiding; you either can or can't act. There's no second take.

There's something interesting about playing live; you're in the moment, and I think it would be beneficial.

I think a show is for fun, and the thing about playing live is that you make mistakes, and that's what's sort of exciting about it.

If I do a bit on stage, I prepare too much. Those bits are all really, really carefully written, and overwritten, and researched. I really don't feel like I can wing it. So I write it out word for word, and when I'm onstage I'll improvise around it.

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

Theatre is more exciting in the sense that you can actually see the audience in the eye. You know there are no takes and retakes. You have one chance to do your job... and you better do it well!

The studio work is the nasty, tedious, hard and nerve-wracking part, interrupted by moments of exhilaration. Playing live is the chance to actually have some fun and get on a stage.

I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it.

I'm always trying out new stuff onstage. That's where I do all my writing.

Playing a stadium is a big adrenaline boost for me and I dig it. It keeps me on my toes and makes me revamp everything I'm doing and not get stagnant with how I approach every show, which is something I like.

You don't really know a song until you play it live.

From the first time you can look in the paper and you accept that you're the entertainment for some people that night, it becomes so much more enjoyable to play live.

It's thrilling to be onstage and to not know, literally, what the next moment is going to bring. To just submit to the not-knowing-ness of it.

Shellac was asked to do a recreation of our first album, but we've always been a band that improvised our sets. That's critical to the way that we function on stage. Whatever the mood takes us on stage can vary from night to night with what you feel like playing.

Even when I go do comedy stuff live, I can still feel the drummer in me about to go onstage.

It's a constant challenge to get your arrangement and musical expression across to a new audience, especially when you're playing live every night like we are.

You always hear actors say, 'Theater is my first love,' and it is. It's a time when you really get to do what you do, and there's not a lot of waiting around and interruption and not a lot of money involved - sometimes money really clouds the waters of creativity.