Sean O'Casey Quotes

My life is a performance for which I was never given any chance to rehearse.

I was so intimidated by the thought of improvising back in the '80s when I was in Chicago. I think the opportunity only even came up once that I can recall, and I turned down the offer. It was to go improvise in some club in the suburbs or something. Good God, I couldn't think of anything more frightening than to get up there without a plan.

I'm very bad with improvisation. I hate it.

I was the same kind of father as I was a harpist - I played by ear.

I haven't planned a reaction on anything... If you do, you've screwed up.

When you go live, anything can happen. It excites me because it means I have to be on. When the camera's on, whatever happens happens.

You kind of half-prepare a speech in your head, and then you get up there and then you end up saying nothing that was in your head before you went up there. It's a very weird thing. I never do award speeches too well.

Improvisation has never been my strong point.

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.

I'm one of the school of people who don't do research of the reality of the thing or the unreality of the thing. In all the movies I've done, I've never done any research.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

What a terrible thing life can be.

Nothing's planned. Never say never.

You're at your best when you don't know what you're doing.

When you work without a script, you are in a sense working in a much more improvisational way than when you are prepared totally.

Our ingress into the world Was naked and bare; Our progress through the world Is trouble and care.

Charlie Brown: "Life is just too much for me... I've been confused right from the day I was born... I think the whole trouble is that we're thrown into life too fast... We're not really prepared..." Linus: "What did you want... A chance to warm up first?"

It is funny you know, you spend 12 years of your life learning about things and about life, but they never really tell you how hard life really is.

Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void.

He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet.

I never wanted to show up and just say, "Okay, what are we doing today? Let's wing it!"

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.

If you become very self-conscious about what you are doing, you kill. You kill the character. Then it doesn't work. You have to come from a sincere place. And you don't think too much. I don't go to the hotel and I start thinking what am I going to say tomorrow and start writing things down.

I don't think it's something you can be prepared for. I'm just going with the flow.

I do a little improv in my shows. Kind of like our movie, I'll do beats and ideas of dialogue, but I think there's less pressure because it's a live show. If you mess up, the audience laughs because we don't really know what we're doing. But as far as shooting, that was very scary, trying to make a point and drive the film. It definitely helped improvising.