Pierre Boulez Quotes

Complete strangers can stand silent next to each other in an elevator and not even look each other in the eye. But at a concert, those same strangers could find themselves dancing and singing together like best friends. That's the power of music.

When people get emotional and sing the song with you - it's an incredible thing.

Film is a collective experience, as you know.

Something happens to us all when we experience something as a unit that doesn't occur when we're on our couches or holding our little portable DVD players.

Live interaction with a crowd is a cathartic, spiritual kind of exchange, and it's intensified at a festival.

One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.

It is such a social thing, laughing. Two thousand people in a room laughing is such a great buzz and they tend to laugh much more in a group.

The collective experience of watching a great film together in a room is a transcendent moment that will never die.

I don't know, I always had an active dream life, and there's something so profound and wonderful about a movie. It's so alive. It's so shared. The thing of sitting in an audience and going into a dream-like state with several hundred other people that are sharing exactly what you're feeling is a profound event.

One of the things that I think is special about DJing is creating this atmosphere of collectiveness, as if to say, 'We're all in this together.'

All music is escapism for me, but I like the way that, on a good night, that sense of escapism can be shared.

That's part of what I remember about seeing the movies that influenced me: the experience of watching them with a crowd and how they react to something.

Music is the best way that I can communicate with other people.

When you're 30, 40, 50 people and you're all in the room and that energy flows, that's sort of easy to maintain and I think we've learned to love that.

We think that this is just our world and we don't know what other people are thinking. Music actually is a phenomenal connector in that respect. It's a special language that defines certain boundaries and connects people in a particular way, a very emotional way, I have found.

I think escape is sort of like coming to a show with ten thousand other people and responding to that moment. Sharing that moment - that's escape.

Ideally the point of music is community, not the player. Musicians are simply channels to link the audience to the music and to each other.

When we laugh we temporarily give ourselves over to the person who makes us laugh.

There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before.

I think one of the things that makes theater special is first of all, it's one of the last places you put your phone away. And second of all, it's one of the last places where we all have a common experience together.

They call it collective energy. It's that same feeling that you get when you meditate amongst a ton of people. What actually makes the festival feel so special is that while you're watching a band or an artist, you're standing there, kind of feeling the same feeling with so many people in such a small space and that gives you collective energy. It's that kind of strange feeling in which you almost feel people breathing.

I've always been more interested in the audience than I have in the plays. I like that idea of all those people sitting in the dark together. It's kind of fun.

The best thing about sports is the sense of community and shared emotion it can create.

People who laugh together generally don't kill each other.