Nathan Fillion Quotes

I think one of the things about listening is that it's always at its most powerful when it's present, when it's right here, when it's right now. And that's a lesson about improv that I think just made me a much more social person.

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Let them talk to you. You learn to talk to them.

Acting is reacting. You can't react if you're not paying attention, if you're not listening.

My whole process is based on meditation as well as listening really closely to what the director says and what the choreographer says. I try to stay in the immediate present reality with my partners on stage, give and take reality.

Jazz has a lot to do with being very present. You know the structure, then you flow through it.

To hear something asks very little of us. To listen places our entire being on notice.

Go right on and listen as thou goest.

Acting is about listening and reacting. John Wayne was right: Acting is just reacting. You don't have to do much - as long as you stay out of the way of others. That's why it works.

If you look hard and long, you can find us. If you listen hard and long, you can hear any of us, call any of us that you wish.

A lot of what acting is is paying attention.

The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what other people say. It's about what you hear.

I love acting with kids, cause they're great acting partners. They're totally present. Even when they're acting, they're still available and you can crack them up or something weird will happen and they'll go with it.

I love improv so much. Listening. I think that's the key. When you improvise, you put a lot of pressure on yourself to create, and to be generating information, and trying to be funny, but if you just listen to what's being said to you, and then react honestly, you generally get better results.

Improv relies just as much on listening as it does you delivering dialogue. That's the hard for some people. Some people just concentrate on what they're going to say, and they're not listening. You have to listen in order to see where the other person is going to.

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.

When I over-prepare, I try to let it all go and forget all about it when the camera rolls, so I can just be present with the other actors and allow what's going to happen to happen without too much preconception.

With devotion at the center of your awareness, you don't have to refer to your past in order to make a choice of how to respond or react in any given situation.

The key to acting - from what little I know about that wonderful craft - is listening, and interacting with the other person in order to achieve magic. One way to do that is almost to provoke.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

I never think about the play or visualize anything. I do what comes to me at that moment. Instinct. It has always been that way.

Once I'm on set, the only thing I'm really interested in is being in the room. Being present. And trusting that what I've done is sufficient, and I'm also trusting that I've also left room for magic.

It's pretty simple to me: we come from a really grounded world where anything you say could be the thing that the scene becomes about. We're always treating it as if we would treat it in real life. It's all observation.

The big secret in acting is listening to people.

Presence is more than just being there.

With improv, it's a combination of listening and not trying to be funny.