Lynn Nottage Quotes

The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them.

The reason I'm an actor and am trying to make my way in drama is to move people, to affect people, to gain a response - so these people who come up to you in the street are your audience.

I think anger is a good thing.

My main goal as an actor, with my craft or whatever poncy way you want to say it, is to always take the audience with me. To make them feel for me, or to make them hate me, I want a reaction. I want their emotions. The worst reaction someone can have is, "eh."

I love when people laugh. I love when they cry, I like a story to say something, and I hope the audience feels happier leaving the theatre than when it came in.

I want to break into the acting industry. It's something I have a great deal of respect for; it's a passion of mine. It's so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that's pretty cool.

As long as I can make an audience feel something, I don't care whether it's a good thing or bad thing, just to feel something is important to me.

Allowing children to show their guilt, show their grief, show their anger, takes the sting out of the situation.

I'm not a screamer. I'm confrontational, but I don't think that translates into anger.

Being in front of all these people staring at you and it helps you to dig down and become more emotional and get lost in it as you're feeding on people's energy.

My approach is so simple; every song I sing, every story I tell, every move I make, must move the audience to laughter, tears, or inspiration. Otherwise, why do it? It's the communication.

I think that with any emotion - fear, love, nervousness - if the actor's feeling it, then the audience feels it.

I don't know why people are so surprised by my live performances. My approach is so simple; every song I sing, every story I tell, every move I make, must move the audience to laughter, tears or inspiration. Otherwise, why should I do it?

I love working with an audience. I love working with actual people who, you know, if they're moved, you see it. If you say something they're stunned by, you see their jaws drop. If they're amused, they laugh - that kind of reinforcement, I totally adore.

If I'm on a bus and someone makes my blood boil, I'll pocket those emotions and put them in a song.

I think, for one, we have to really accept that anger is a normal human emotion that can be a positive force for change.

I want you to laugh and cry. That's what I do.

When you're playing someone who is angry and sad all the time, you get a little down.

I get a little teary on stage sometimes. It can be really emotional when it dawns on you that people are singing along and having fun.

If I am doing a speech at a Labour party meeting - I think I have done every constituency - I'll look for a happy face, and talk to that face. In the Commons, with all the anger, I'll fix on a blank panel above their heads.

When she started crying in my rehearsal, I felt so badly because I was like, 'I'm making Kelly Clarkson cry right now,' but it also felt really good because I thought, 'If she is feeling this, hopefully, America will feel this, too.'

When you're playing music and you're starting to expose yourself for the first time, there's nothing more powerful than being listened to and being actually heard.

Anger is so constructive.

I learned how to defend myself at the OSB, not physically but with words.

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.