Katarina Witt Quotes

I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it.

I love the challenge of show business. It keeps me on my toes.

Once I get out onstage, it's the same sort of basic production that it is anywhere else. But I might be a little bit aware that there might be people I know out there, who wondered where I was.

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.

I've been onstage once for one performance with four days' rehearsal.

I know what it feels like to walk out in front of a sold-out crowd of a thousand people that are there for you, and how good that feels, but as an opener, you just have to train yourself to think that it's going to be harder.

I started out as a dancer as a kid; I've been dancing since I was 4. So, performing was always part of what I was. I don't know if it I enjoyed the response I got from people or if I liked having an audience, but there's something in me that wanted to perform.

I like the pressure of having to perform so people will come to me.

Fans want more; they want you to perform in their living room. That's the nature of the beast.

Being a professional wrestler surely prepares you for any acting role in that we have to act on live television, so there's a lot of pressure put there.

Ever since I was a little kid, I loved being the centre of attention. I think it's part of the reason why I loved skating. You're literally in a fishbowl. You're in the middle of the ice by yourself, and the world is watching.

Why wouldn't I like to walk into a room full of people who are dying to hear everything I say?

Throughout my life, I've been that annoying kid on every stage at school, in every talent contest.

I would like to be going all over the kingdom...and acting everywhere. There's nothing in the world equal to seeing the house rise at you, one sea of delightful faces, one hurrah of applause!

When I'm on stage, I feel like a performer, for sure. I know people are looking at me and taking pictures and singing along, and that part's wonderful.

On stage, there are hundreds of people watching you. It's so much energy directed at you. I pick up energy really easily. Even if I go to the grocery store and no one is paying attention to me, I can pick up other people's moods and it's really intense.

If you're up there [on stage] thinking about what you're doing, you're just not there and it's not going to happen.So trying to learn how to overcome those - which is a normal thing to do. You're in front of a lot of people. People are going to get very self-conscious. So you have to learn to sort of overcome that tendency towards self-consciousness and just blow it wide open. And you jump in and join all those people that are out there enjoying what you're doing together.

This is what I love to do. I love to perform for people that get it or just want something interesting.

Any chance I had to get in front of people - amateur talent contests at movie houses like the Broadway, the president - I took.

I like entertaining people. I like being on stage. I like being in the life. This is what I do. This is the only thing I know how to do besides rob people and fight. Even when I was robbing people, I was entertaining them. But that's just what I love doing.

Once I started getting mainstream people to my shows, I realized we were taking too many solos, and they were too long. I started gauging when people were going on their iPhones.

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.

I'm always nervous about it. You know, somehow, without even knowing it, I try and recreate the idea of what it feels like to go in front of an audience every night when I'm making a film. And that similar type of pressure and excitement before a scene, or preparing for a movie, so...

It's impossible for me to play a part without thinking about the audience.

The stage, the show, the fans, that doesn’t matter because I’m always gonna fight my fight.