Elaine Stritch Quotes

I think I realized it was an art form at the beginning, but it took me a really long time before I was able to view what I was performing myself as an art form.

I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it.

I try to see interviewing as performance art, and just take it as it comes.

I just like to write and then perform.

Now, performing is second nature and I love every second of it. It is a very emotional thing when I can't play a song; maybe I'm hitting on something that I don't want to deal with. All of it is so personal. It is like therapy.

One of the primary motivations for the series is that I never really felt that I was a person who could explain verbally what I thought all that well.

I never thought of acting as a creative process. Christ, I used to go to the movies and see Brando talking like he was trying to sell shoes, and he was great. I thought anybody could do it. Then I tried it, and I got so uptight, I'm limited as to what I can do on film.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me.

People think memorizing lines is hard, when that's the last thing you worry about. You get that done, and then you've got to worry about the internal stuff, which is the challenging part.

Acting is such a personal thing, which is weird because at the same time it's not. It's for the consumption of other people. But in terms of creative outlets and expressing yourself, it's just the most extreme version of that that I've ever found. It's like running, it's exertion.

It was such a paradox for me that the only thing I know how to do is act, but that the first thing I abandoned while writing were the characters.

Acting is great. You spend your whole life trying to get it right.

Yes, sharing super-personal experiences is scary, but I can only get up on stage and perform it if I really connect with the music.

I think the actual art of expressing yourself is a very important part of being human. And an important part of being a performer is understanding what it's like to create yourself.

I'm super confident about creative stuff, and I'm really not confident about human interactions stuff.

Acting is something where you have to completely remove yourself. So, do I find acting easy? Absolutely no! Do I want to do more of it? Do I enjoy doing it? Do I feel appreciative to get this opportunity? Absolutely!

Speeches and me don't get along sometimes. It is kind of like putting a tie too tight on my neck. I'm going to do whatever feels right.

I panic every time I put out a record. I think every artist does.

When you come to actually act, it's a game. It may be a very serious game, but it's still a game. If you lose that sense of play, the work suffers.

At some point I stopped stand-up because I didn't have something to say on a nightly basis.

I am fine, though it is hard to think of what kind of work to make at this point, other than decorative, escapist or abstract. I suppose I'll explore one or all of these things.

It makes me sad when I see artists who come alive when they go onstage, because, gee, I really come alive when I'm home.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

The terrible thing about acting is the stops and starts.

An actor should take lessons from a painter and a sculptor.