Joe Satriani Quotes

To be at acting school, it was kind of the first time you felt the freedom to be as much of yourself as you wanted. People weren't going to judge you.

I don't think of myself as Scottish or lesbian when I sit down and write. I am glad I have broken out of that limited audience.

The audience changes every night. You're the same person. You have to speak your mind and do the stuff that you think is funny and makes you laugh.

I feel a kind of permission and freedom in my work that I might not allow myself in my real life.

I started off doing theater as a kid, and I always played a character. I hid behind the script and was told where to go. But to actually perform as yourself is very difficult. I didn't used to enjoy it, but now I do.

Find your voice and don't be afraid to explore it.

The artist is very lucky, because in an art form that's spontaneous like jazz, that's when you really see your true self. And that's why, when I put down my instrument, that's when the challenge starts, because to learn how to be that kind of human being at that level that you are when you're playing - that's the key, that's the hard part.

If you start thinking about who's going to read it [you're writing], or what grade will you get, or is it going to win that award, or are you going to get into this graduate program, you're blocking the light, and the light is that guidance and love we get when we open up our hearts and are guided by our higher selves, or God, or the Buddha Lupe [Buddha and the Virgin of Guadalupe fused together, as they are in the tattoo on Sandra's right arm], or whatever you believe in, or love.

I learned how to be more theatrical and have more fun, and to take a song and sing it over and over again in different ways, and make it different each time. I'm not just singing the song - it's this thing that's affecting me.

When you get that opportunity to be honest and open with somebody, for the first time, and share things about yourself that you haven't been able to share before, that you might be scared of or ashamed about, that's really exhilarating, and I think that's something that people will really identify with.

Frank Sinatra said this great thing, that singing isn't about singing in tune, or great technical singing. It's about making people believe in the story you're telling.

I don't think I'm singing. I feel like I'm playing a horn...What comes out is what I feel.

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.

I was born to stand out. I don't care whether or not people will find me attractive on screen. That's not why I became an actor. I know that more and more with each new role.

In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself," I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.

I think that's great - I just try not to be one of those people. I find the more I think about it, the less free I feel when I write and when I work.

Fame stole my yellow. Yellow is the color you get when you're real and brutally honest. Yellow is with my kids[...]The bundle of bright yellow warming my core, formerly frozen and uninhabitable[...]They got yellow from me, and I felt yellow giving it to them and it was all good[...]So, why am I leaving my show? It took my yellow. I wanted it back. Without it I can't live. The gray kills me.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.

I hope one day I will be able to be completely myself. Maybe I'll be wilder.

It was seriously just a name. They didn’t tell you what to do. They didn’t tell you how they wanted the character to be - nothing. You went in to audition for this character name and that was it. When I started, before I came onto the set, I went to Gene Roddenberry and said: hey, what do you want from this guy? Who is he? And being as smart as he is, he said: don’t listen to what you’ve heard or read or seen in the past, nothing. Just make the character your own. And that’s what I did.

In my life, I didn't get into comedy to be - I had no business model. All I wanted to do was, basically, finish becoming myself. And you stand in front of people and be seen and heard in this format. I thought it was the most practical format for me to express whatever it was I was going through. Whatever my ideas were in my evolving philosophy about life. I obviously don't sell out theaters. I'm not a household name. I'm not incredibly consistent in terms of doing the same act over and over again, and I'm definitely working out a lot of my existential issues onstage.

Many people forget that Jazz, no matter what form it takes, must come from the heart as well as the mind.

If you did not care at all what anyone else thought about you, what would you do differently or change in your life?

Do the thing itself. Don’t pay much mind to critics or what anyone says about it. Just do it, in any form possible, and watch others doing it. Take it in viscerally, get it by osmosis. Don’t ever read your own reviews, certainly not the good ones.

It's been very important throughout my career that I've met all the guys I've copied, because at each stage they've said, 'Don't play like me, play like you.'