Kyle Abraham Quotes

If you start trying to communicate ideas, I think you don't allow the audience to see themselves.

Acting is the most communicative thing I can imagine doing.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

I think, as singers and performers, we are ambassadors of the human experience. I don't want to get bored just talking about myself.

Believing that navel-gazing in and of itself can transform itself into something that means something for society. I mean, we are communicative creatures. We desire to sort of understand each other's experiences and points of view. Storytelling is what painting, literature, filmmaking is all about.

The one thing I think you must do is, as painful as it is as a parent, is listen.

It's communication - that's what theatre is all about.

Everything was a song. Every conversation, every personal hurt, every observance of people in stress, happiness and love... if you could feel it, I could feel it. And I could write a song about it.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

The point of theatre is transformation: to make an extraordinary event out of ordinary material right in front of an audience's eyes. Where the germ of the idea came from is pretty much irrelevant. What matters to every theatre maker I know is speaking clearly to the audience 'right now.'

Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.

I drive my wife crazy. I'm hypersensitive, which she will often point out. She'll say something, and I find the way she said it hurtful. And she'll look at me like I'm an idiot and say, 'What are you talking about?' My radar is probably tuned way too sensitively. I wouldn't want to change it because I do think it's an important part of what I do.

I am not interested in entertaining people. I think being an actor provides an opportunity to give people an experience they can connect to, reflect on, learn from, laugh at.

Storytelling is about listening in any media.

I think one of my better gifts as a writer is empathy.

Communication is very important. And the arts do that, whether it's film or theater.

I was immature the way I handled the business. I saw myself as a tribune of the people.

It's really important to create something, like with my creations as a musician. Just let it flow. Focus on how to deliver message to audience. Don't get ego.

I record cello Etudes that are fewer than four minutes long and post them on YouTube. How can one execute fully-formed ideas with utmost perfection, yet stay free enough to allow improvisatory nuance? This has immediate application in almost every area of life, but especially in performance.

I think there's an ongoing effort involved in trying to get a bigger perspective, trying to let go of things that limit your capacity to love and be loved or your capacity to hear and to really speak.

My purpose in performing is to communicate the joy I experience in living.

Writing is an antidote for loneliness.

At the end of the day if you want to entertain people, you've got to take your ego out of the equation.

Vocal rest is awesome. It is like any kind of fast. Firstly, it is a purification of speech. It made me realize how not careful I am with the things I say. It also makes you find new ways of communication and new methods to connect with people.

No matter what you're going through, as long as you have some specific emotion, whether it's positive or negative, it is all stuff that you can use on stage.