Ian MacKaye Quotes

I don't think I'm exactly gregarious, you know. I'm not usually known as the loud person in the room.

I bring people on stage with me. It's a good time, and people love to join in on the party. Show me a smile, and I'll show you one back.

I never do a show where the people just sit there and look at me. They always sing along. It's going to be a fun time.

When it comes to music, we live in a very different world than everyone did in the 1960s and 1970s.

I don't necessarily want to make people stomp and clap. I simply want to engage people.

I never try and do the same show, ever. The audience controls the dynamic of the shows. Sometimes they listen, and sometimes they ask a million questions.

I always think the audience should be part of the show.

Every single performance of 'Fleabag,' I would learn so much from the audience reaction or how you could change it all the time, and I loved that sense that the performance is ever-growing and changing and could be affected by the audience.

Just us as people, we're different around different people and in different environments.

You give out the words and then sing them. You give out the words, you know, and the people can hear what you're giving out, and they sing that song or that line and they do the same thing again.

Solitude matters. And for some people it's the air they breathe.

All [people] are intolerant.... Only they're intolerant of different things.

There are performances in which the people who have the best muscle skills and musical history may be on the stage, but it's not  -  like a Dead show is not like a usual sit-down performance; the audience does participate.

The traditional churches are having to transition into new methodologies and new ways of reaching people and they are starting to understand that and looking for ways they can increase their relevance to the contemporary society.

Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd people, mostly poor.

People love conversation, and movies are conversations, and an audience has to participate; it has to fill in some blanks.

It's important to begin to even consider whether countries can become something that looks very different because people tend to take their countries for granted.

In the last twenty-five years a change has come over the visual habits of Americans . . . From being a wordminded people we are becoming an eyeminded people.

There is a kind of laughter people laugh at public events, as if a joke were a charity auction and they want to be seen to be bidding.

In life we listen to other people. Listen with varying degrees of concentration and attention, right? Actors must learn to listen in a different way.

When you speak words that are relevant to people, they automatically shut up and you know you are in the presence of some very magical words. It's a gift when someone can listen and be quiet and not interrupt.

I think I'm a different person with different people.

I always tell people you can take the thugest thug in the world, and if you put a suit on him, he'll act different, trust me.

When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.