K'naan Quotes

Sometimes I just rely on technique on stage, but it's not about technique. It's about how much you want to deliver the message to the audience. That's all.

I know that if I can't move people, then I have no business being an actor.

I love the fact that I can go out there on stage with a guitar and sing a song that means something to somebody.

Singing well has always been important to me, but the most important factor is the connection to the audience.

When I sing, I pick out people in the audience and pinpoint on them. So if you feel that I am singing just for you, you may be right!

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

There's something about being onstage, singing my lyrics to somebody and them either listening and receiving them, or singing them back to me, that I just can't get enough of.

At the end of the day, whether it's on film or on stage or for a crowd of however many at Kenwood House, my job is to make sure people have a good time and come away with a feeling and a story.

I just love to do the songs, and that's what I'm still about - taking people on a trip. A good trip.

I love connecting with the audience, and there's more ways than one to do that.

Every time I reach a new audience, that means I'm doing something right.

Action is drama. If we cannot make the audience laugh, smile or cry with us, we are not actors.

Many more people saw me on TV than will ever get to see me on stage, but I do love being in the same room as the people I'm telling the story to.

Out there in the spotlight you're a million miles away and every ounce of energy you try to give away as the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play.

The reason that you dance and sing is to make the audience feel like they're dancing and singing. As long as you're having fun with it and giving it 100 percent, they're gonna feel that.

Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self... When acting, you're someone else.

An actor works with their soul and their thought.

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

I do not play to musicians. I play to the people.

When you think about Broadway, you think broad and big, but the fact is there are so many plays that are very intimate, but fill a 1,500-seat house. Plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' have deep moments of silence and intimacy to them.

I'm not trying to be romantic. I think you can tell when people are trying to be sexy onstage. When I was doing 'All the Way,' I was really thinking about my wife. People don't know my personal experience, but they can tell it's an honest interpretation.

If the beat gets to the audience, and the message touches them, you've got a hit.

I just try to tell a story with a song, and be able to try to transmit the emotion to you. That's all I'm really trying to do.

I like to see people's eyes when I'm singing to them.

I like to feel that something's alive in acting, like something's really going on.