Dan Smith Quotes

Whenever I walk out on a stage, I'm begging for affection.

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.

An 'OMG' of mine would probably be speaking on stage and performing in front of thousands of people!

Being in front of all these people staring at you and it helps you to dig down and become more emotional and get lost in it as you're feeding on people's energy.

In acting class, I used to hide in the corner and pray the teacher wouldn't call on me.

I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.

I think maybe even one of the reasons I became an actor was actually to hide. I mean, it sounds paradoxical because, of course, people are standing up in a public place and encouraging other people to look at them. So that's not the conventional definition of hiding.

People don't know what it's like standing up there onstage, when you have a wall of people smiling at you.

I never got nervous performing my own material.

I play shows sometimes, and if everything's connecting, I start blabbing to the audience about anything. Between songs, talking about things in my personal life, or whatever. But there are other situations where I feel a little closed-off. It's really kind of a day-to-day thing.

At first it was kind of hard, because I had become used to just my phone screen in front of me. But sharing your songs with an audience is incredible.

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.

When I'm onstage, I feel a lot of love. But I don't like crowds and random spectators.

Half the time, when I first run onstage, I can't look directly at the audience just because of self-consciousness. It's human nature. Sometimes you feel like the man, and sometimes you don't. But sometimes that self-conscious energy is good for the show, it draws people in more.

There's nothing more vulnerable than just standing in front of a thousand people, or ten thousand people, and doing your best to entertain them, touch them in some way.

When I performed the songs in front of an audience at the end of each project and I knew the storytellers were in the crowd listening, that was hard.

I'm much more comfortable and confident running out on the field in front of 70,000 people instead of standing in front of a camera trying to say some lines.

Playing live is closer to theatre, although when you're up there on your own, it's quite scary and revealing because you're playing your own songs. It's like a one man show that you've written yourself.

I am going to keep on singing. I have no intention of retiring. Actually, I always wonder whether people know my songs in the different countries I visit. I feel nervous over whether they will sing along with me or not.

I used to be afraid of looking at the audience.

Maybe I just wasn't a show-biz type. I didn't miss performing at all.

It's a unique thing to stand in front of a crowd and sing your songs.

In a strange way, I'm way more comfortable onstage than anywhere else.

I don't think that just because you go on stage you are an exhibitionist.

Every three days on average, I am alone on stage, facing the public.