Yoko Ono Quotes

Music can be transformative, utterly transformative. The act of music is utterly transformative.

When it is working, you completely go into another place, you're tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That's what it's all about.

I think the funny thing about acting for me - and I hold it in a very holy, spiritual way - not to be overly fundamentalist about it, but it's that important to me - is that it is an ancient healing art.

The performance of Carnatic music is multi-dimensional and layered. A performance is at once an artiste's cathartic process of personal exploration and an open energy exchange with the audience: a release and a conversation.

I have healed the sick by the power of the God. I have spoken with the gift of tongues.

I prefer to think of the audience as a single living organism with which I am sharing a singular, never-to-be-repeated experience.

See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality.

When I sing, I have a sense of peace, I feel like my brain turns off, and I become the core person of who I am - the essence of me. I feel connected to whatever is out there. It's almost like I leave my body and get to watch.

Music has always been a great solace for me. It's still something that gives me far more joy than movies, I must say. I love movies, too. But somehow, music can transport you. There are so many different kinds of experiences you can have with music.

I think when you're at your best as an actor, it is cathartic.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

The interesting thing about acting is using all your own stuff and having some kind of personal catharsis while you're working.

My job in this life is to give people spiritual ecstasy through music. In my concerts people cry, laugh, dance. If they climaxed spiritually, I did my job. I did it decently and honestly.

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.

Awakening your spiritual side is really what artists do. When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world.

I think there's a lot of similarity between what people try to do with religion with what they want from art. In fact, I very specifically think that they are same thing. Not that religion and art are the same, but that they both tap into the same need we have for surrender.

I am a father, and sometimes I want to stay close to home. By varying the workplace, it gives me space to breathe. I enjoy theatre because it reminds me I'm mortal, and it's terrifying when it goes wrong but the most thrilling experience when it flies.

Poetry is that sentiment of the soul, or faculty of the mind, which enables its possessor to appreciate and realize the heights and depths of human experience. It is the power to feel pleasure or suffer pain in all its exquisiteness and intensity.

I did feel that a part of my work was to empty myself out and let it move through me.

An actor with a genuine gift has the power to transport you from whatever your own pains may be into an entirely different world, freeing you from whatever you may be going through. At its best, it can be better than any medication.

Music is a spiritual event and a means to realize freedom.

Your painting is the marking of your progression into nature, a sensation of something you see way beyond the two pretty colors over there. Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.

I can stand at the back of the theater and watch an audience laugh, cry, and be moved by what I do. I can entertain people around the world. It's nice when you can give someone that gift.

Going on stage and transcending the audience and becoming this otherworldly thing makes you a dancer. It's not so black and white.

One of the great gifts of being a human being is that you can get rid of yourself and enter into the oneness of music.