Stephen Colbert Quotes

To do a comedy team, it requires so much extracurricular stuff, so much compromise, so much intuitiveness to know what the other guy is doing. That's why it's so hard to do it.

There is no roles. No one is keeping any roles. The drummer is also answering everybody and everything. So it is a constant conversation and communication between musicians on an extremely high level with extremely valuable material, motifs, and melodies.

Yeah, improvising only really works 100% when you're with somebody.

I'm convinced to do improv. All you have to do is listen to what people are saying to you, and then just add more information to what they've just said. That's all there is to improv, but it's the hardest thing to do.

The lifelong goal of an improviser is to listen to what the other person is saying, taking it in, and responding.

With improv, it's a combination of listening and not trying to be funny.

You've got to find a way to relate to people. I just did an improvised episode for Joe Swanberg's new Netflix show, 'Easy,' and it was a huge learning curve for me and taught me so much about fear and courage. But when you're present in the moment, the audience, it's incomparable.

That's what music-making is: a dialogue.

I'm definitely one of those people that what comes into my head falls out of my mouth. That's a way for me to be even more creative, to sort of get the ball rolling and start parlaying off of somebody and interacting. That charge or that friction sometimes - if it's positive or negative - is inspiring, and it gets people to be I think creative, maybe.

It's pretty boring, working by yourself. The scene happens in between the two of you, and then you don't know what it's going to be because it's a kind of combustion. So, you do take something from every actor you work with.

I think music naturally wants to be played with more than one person. There's a surprise element, and you don't know what it will be, and it's up to that other person's energy to help create this third thing.

The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody.

The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what other people say. It's about what you hear.

I love acting with kids, cause they're great acting partners. They're totally present. Even when they're acting, they're still available and you can crack them up or something weird will happen and they'll go with it.

Music is a dialogue.

You know, you can have someone who's the very best at something, but if there's not that kind of chemistry, collaborating is not going to amount to anything.

The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you've got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky's the limit.

A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

I think jamming is the way we begin to communicate. In the old days, people actually wrote notes on paper and sent them to each other. I guess that's how they jammed.

I love to be in the position of not knowing what I'm gonna do, but having rehearsed all of those so when something happens with the others actors I go with whatever that is I'm getting.

I just like collaborating.

A lot of times, good improv is when both people, or however many people are in the scene, really have no idea what the next thing you're going to say is.

I'm encouraging other people, whether they're professionals or not, to use their creativity to express themselves, to get a conversation going, to get the party started, really.

What I say about actors is you always want to find an actor you can play ball with. You throw the ball at them and you want them to throw it back. Your ball playing is a lot better when you play with good ballplayers, like any sport. Every actor I know feels the same way.

When I'm interviewing somebody I don't work from prepared questions.