Harry Houdini Quotes

I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it.

I wish I didn't have to perform 'Iron Man' every night.

Some people say that practice makes perfect but I just feel that the repetition works against me and I start thinking too far ahead during a show.

It's physically very, very, very trying to be onstage as a performer, not unlike an athlete, for thirty years.

There are all sorts of reasons why I don't do much work in the theatre, the main one being that after two performances I feel I've given all I can. I hate repetition, I really do. It's like asking a painter to paint he same picture every day of his life.

I've performed solo for 20 years now, but I don't do much of it, because if you only play alone, you go crazy and out of tune and play foolish music.

I like performing, but I usually get really sick when I'm on tour, and it's just hard.

I used to get so carried away while I was on stage that I'd be physically damaged by the end of a concert.

I'm affected by the characters I play, and sometimes they're hard to live with.

Every time I do something, I worry it's my last job.

I stand on stage hoping to give good energy to the audience, but if I cannot give good energy anymore, I will have to leave right away.

Doing eight shows a week is hard.

From a young age, pupils are put under immense amounts of pressure in high-stakes exams. Often, they're made to feel like their whole future depends on how they perform in these narrowly focussed tests.

It's a sick thing, right: people are afraid of public speaking. I do public speaking, except my public speaking involves the audience only having one type of emotion and one type of reaction. If they have anything other than laughter, it's a failure. That's an absurd thing for a human to try to seek. The main thing to realize is that whatever I say, it's my truth and I believe in it, and if I don't get a laugh off that, then it's not working.

I had gotten to the point where I just didn't want to perform anymore - I didn't want to be on the chopping block anymore. I started to want to withdraw and retreat from it.

If one day I go to a game and I don't feel I can win, maybe I don't go.

I wasn't nervous at all. I applied the same amount of efforts to the love scenes as I did to the skating and the acting and everything else.

Acting on television is like being asked by the captain to entertain the passengers while the ship goes down.

There's a side to being in a band that some people embrace and some don't: the fact that you're performing and you care about how it comes across.

I have horrible stage fright - you know how you go through the bi-polar stage fright thing? Then you go on drugs to get over the stage fright and perform, but then you're not funny at all.

I think I may drop dead on the stage someday. I hate to think of it. But it's getting tough on me, the travel. The show, I somehow manage to rise up to it, you know. But I have no desire to retire.

For most actors, it's such a struggle to get work. Once they have it, they feel that there's an enormous amount of pressure on them to make it work, and have everyone love them.

Second violins can play a concerto perfectly if they're in their own home and nobody's there.

Everything about acting is a challenge. I'm self-conscious. You couldn't do anything to cause me to be more self-conscious than to stick a camera in my face and have 60 people standing behind it, waiting for me to perform.

Out of all the weird things out of the tour, the weirdest thing for me is singing every day.