Laura Mvula Quotes

There's a oneness to showing yourself to an audience. They feel that. It's healthy. That's what acting is all about.

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.

With music, you're really showing someone a piece of your soul. You're saying, 'This is mine. I wrote this, I made this, I'm performing this. This is how I'm presenting it to you.' There's something really scary about that, but there's also something next-worldly about it, too.

I'm really vulnerable onstage because it's just me. I'm not really trying to put up a front or act a certain way.

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.

I always found that the closer I got to who I really am, on stage, the more they responded to it.

With my fan base, I'm just vulnerable. I'm very transparent and vulnerable.

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.

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

In the same way that I'm open when I speak, I'm that open on stage. I feed off the energy of the audience, too, so they're feeling what I'm feeling.

It wasn't so much that I was all alone on stage, but it was the realization of how much you need the response-you need the audience to tell you where to go.

As an actor, you're naked emotionally; you're revealing yourself emotionally.

Almost everybody will listen to you when you tell your own story.

I love intimacy, always, of performing.

When I perform, it's very personal. I'm sharing things I like, inviting the audience into my room.

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

I mean, I come from a hippie mentality where I just think to know someone, you need to look into their eyes. Eyes are so important. Until they start melon-balling eyes out, I won't be able to get to know someone another way.

Be willing to share all of who you are. So many of us want a partner, but we're not willing to show all of us.

The more you're writing absolutely honestly, and absolutely bare of intention - even if it feels absolutely personal and small because it's at your own scale - other people relate to it much more.

If I were a writer and not a singer in 10 years, I don't know how I'd feel about writing really personal songs and getting someone else to sing them.

In recitals, you are naked before the audience - well, naked with your jacket and tails. The audience sees and hears the real person, not some role you are interpreting.

Writing is a very intimate thing, especially when you write lyrics and sing them in front of someone for the first time. It's like a really embarrassing situation. To me, singing is almost like crying, and you have to really know someone before you can start crying in front of them.

If you don't have a certain amount of stage fright, then it's not going to be that interesting. It's not going to have the inner vibration. I think screen work needs inner vibration.

When you stand up acoustic in front of an audience, you really are a man without any clothes on. And that can be fun - it depends how much of an exhibitionist you are, I suppose. I quite enjoy it.

Acting came easy to me, I think. There's something about it that's a lot easier for me in the sense that you're playing someone else. In music, you're giving somebody 'you.' Being able to do that and being willing to share that is an entirely different thing.