Bo Burnham Quotes

When you go to the theater, if you're really involved in the play, you don't think about it - you're in it.

When I directed the 'Ring' cycle at the Metropolitan Opera in New York recently, there were people texting all through the show. But theatre isn't a communication device: it's a communion.

The thing that sticks to me most about theater is that because it's such an ape crazy nonstop experience, you really don't have time to think about anything else. You're just really present; you have to be, or else, you know, you can't stop the play.

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.

I can enjoy what I'm engaged in and be fully present rather than planning my answers to questions while someone else is speaking or thinking about my next appointment while my current engagement is still in in progress.

Television has always been our No. 1 competition. But I know firsthand that you can create an experience you can't get on television. I also know that the social experience has an appeal.

You take yourself out of the moment and knock yourself off balance when you judge and think about what you are doing, rather than experiencing and enjoying what you are doing.

If I'm watching my son play soccer, that's what I'm doing. If I'm going to a school concert, that's what I'm doing. I turn the phone off. I actively tune into whatever I'm doing. I walk every evening with one of my sons and for that half an hour, 45 minutes, that's what I'm doing.

In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.

One of the great exercises you can do is to stop and acknowledge the colors around you... If you're constantly distracting yourself, then you're never really experiencing anything fully. It can cause you to feel like you have no center, like nothing is grounding you.

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.

Here it is - right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.

We cannot be present and run our story-line at the same time.

Don't let your life just go in one eye and out the other.

I love the theater because I love the live audience and when we went three cameras we have a live audience in the study so we had someone to play to and react to. That laughter.

Being in front of an audience makes me feel alive. Being with friends makes me feel alive. I’ve done some crazy stuff in my time and yet I can feel infinitely alive curled up on a sofa reading a book. So, what makes me feel alive? I guess it’s realizing I am part of the world around me.

Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.

There's not much to say about acting but this. Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say.

When you read a book, and it's really, really beautiful, you're so engaged you forget to breathe. If you're in a car accident, and everything moves slowly, you can be shocked into the present. The past and the future disappear.

Well... ...That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now.

In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.

When you're walking, just walk. When you're eating, just eat. Not in front of the TV, not with the newspaper. It turns out, that's huge.

Giving something your time isn't the same as giving it your attention.

The activity at this very moment must be the only thing that matters, to which one is fully given. If one is concentrated, it matters little what one is doing. The important, as well as the unimportant things, assume a new dimension of reality, because they have one's full attention.