Saul Bass Quotes

The great risk is always saying, "how will I communicate what I'm trying to get across to a room full of strangers sitting in the dark watching a stage?"

What I find daunting always is to stand on a stage and talk to people, whether they agree with me or not.

Radio interviews are really snappy and I'm just bad at that. I just close down.

Getting up in front of an audience is my biggest motivation.

There's a lot of pressure to chitchat with the audience. But when they're in school, people don't want to get up in front of their classroom when they have to talk about themselves or a project.

I can't play the guitar, so the thoughts of playing one onstage at a festival makes me quiver, but I've been blabbering away in front of people since I was a child, so talking for a living isn't the most daunting thing to do.

I can't recall a bad review - maybe I'm due one. But the worst thing would be if somebody said I was inaudible. Reach your audience's ears - only then can you reach their hearts.

Some fighters enjoy the limelight. I get nervous, I mess up when I'm trying to explain things, because I'm a fighter pure and simple, and not really a talker.

I consider myself a pretty good extemporaneous speaker. Even though I don't like speaking in front of people, I don't think I'm bad at it.

I never experienced getting nervous on stage. I think I was most comfortable there.

For some reason, talking is easy for me. Practice does make perfect; I've been doing it for a while. Being out there in a high-pressure situation with a live audience and a live TV camera on you, it brings something out. It's very organic.

If you have a crippling fear of public speaking, recognize that that is perfectly normal. And know that the only way to get over those nerves is to fully understand the material, the points, the policy you are trying to explain - and then practice it a little bit.

I think the fear of humiliating yourself on stage always motivates me to give at least 90 percent. I've definitely been guilty of leaning on the mic stand, but you can only do that so long before you're like, "Jesus, I'm bombing." The fact that people pay to come see me, that's really just out the window.

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.

I think the need to go on stage speaks to some sort of a profound psychological deficit, but something that happened when you were a kid. Or something your parents did.

Yet through delivery orators succeed, I feel that I am far behind indeed.

It is delivery that makes the orators success.

When you go on a stage, before you go on a stage you're really scared and you're really frightened. You don't know what to do. "Why did I say yes to this?" But once you're on the stage you think, "Okay."

Madison lived in his head and public speaking did not come naturally to him.

All I kept thinking about was, "Man, he's so relaxed onstage! I'm never going to be that relaxed! I'm clearly not meant to be in front of the camera. I'm really not meant for anything but behind the camera."

I never wanted to be a public speaker.

Stand-up is not something that you're good at right away. You have to do it a ton. But, I think I got to shave a year off because I didn't have to get over stage fright.

I think the social faux par is probably what most people fear... more people fear public speaking than death and that's because we don't want to make a fool of ourselves. It's fundamental.

I'm scared of the interviews...I'm scared of having to get up onstage again. I'm scared of the critique. I'm scared right now of doing this again. But that's why I have to do it, I think.

Being on TV in front of people is a lot different than sitting in a dark room with a microphone. When I had my radio show, I was on four hours a day for 20-something years. If you put a live microphone in front of Mother Teresa for that amount of time, she'd piss somebody off.