Loretta Swit Quotes

Whenever I walk out on a stage, I'm begging for affection.

Every three days on average, I am alone on stage, facing the public.

You hear some people saying, 'I'm alive on stage; it's where I feel most complete...' I don't understand that at all; I find that weird and depressing. I don't dislike the audience; it's just when I'm up there, they're in the darkness. There's just a sound of laughing or not. They're not 'people,' they're this big organism.

There is one thing that freezes a musician more than the deadliest physical cold, and that is the spiritual chill of an unresponsive audience!

When you stand up acoustic in front of an audience, you really are a man without any clothes on. And that can be fun - it depends how much of an exhibitionist you are, I suppose. I quite enjoy it.

Headlining can be sort of solitary - you're sort of on your own out there, and you start to feel for a change.

I think actually performing on stage when everyone's facing you and you're one person facing them, that is quite a lonely thing in a strange way. You have to be quite insular from everybody else, you've got thousands of people staring at you and you're just on your own.

Half the time, when I first run onstage, I can't look directly at the audience just because of self-consciousness. It's human nature. Sometimes you feel like the man, and sometimes you don't. But sometimes that self-conscious energy is good for the show, it draws people in more.

There's nothing more vulnerable than just standing in front of a thousand people, or ten thousand people, and doing your best to entertain them, touch them in some way.

When I performed the songs in front of an audience at the end of each project and I knew the storytellers were in the crowd listening, that was hard.

I've never been heckled. I think because I look too small and vulnerable. Sometimes I look out into the audience and see pity in their eyes, so I guess those people may be the ones who would shout something out if they didn't feel so sorry for me.

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.

In the same way that I'm open when I speak, I'm that open on stage. I feed off the energy of the audience, too, so they're feeling what I'm feeling.

If I was going onstage, of course I would talk about it. How could I not?

There is always a mix of apprehension and excitement before you try songs out on a new audience.

I don't think one should be comfortable standing on a stage with people applauding and laughing at every stupid thing you say.

I've never not appeared in front of a live audience for any longer period than a month or two.

Once I'm on stage, the energy of the crowd wipes my nerves away.

I don't think I always look in people's faces, like, as - I think especially when I'm doing my more intimate songs that are quite personal, I always feel it's a bit accusing if I stare in someone's face when I singing quite a personal lyric.

It's quite pretentious, really, isn't it? The notion the audience is going to be interested in you for an hour and a half. Think too much about that and anxiety takes over.

I love hearing my audience breathe.

If you don't have a certain amount of stage fright, then it's not going to be that interesting. It's not going to have the inner vibration. I think screen work needs inner vibration.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

There's definitely a loneliness and, like, an internal element to being a performer.

I'm nervous performing because it's such a weird thing to do, standing on stage demanding people's attention.