Ari Graynor Quotes

I miss improv. I hate it in a way - watching it, doing it - but only because it's so challenging and nerve wracking. Improv is the only belief system I've ever experienced that directly works on how to be. Just how to be.

I can disappear into things very easily. But with acting, you have to be in the moment, and it gives me this incredibly fulfilling emotion: being really present.

There's a Zen to acting, by being in the moment. That's where the power is.

A lot of exercise is mindless; you can have music or the radio on and not be aware. But if you're aware in anything you do - and it doesn't have to be yoga - it changes you. Being present changes you.

Buddhist practices offer a way of saying, 'Hey, come back over here, reconnect.' The only way that you'll actually wake up and have some freedom is if you have the capacity and courage to stay with the vulnerability and the discomfort.

I may be more passionate about my comedy because that's the one place where I feel comfortable - because I'm in the now. Performing is the only time of the day when I have to really force every ounce of concentration into whatever's happening in that moment.

One of the hardest things to do in acting is to stop thinking about yourself and stop being self-conscious.

Sometimes in the past when I was going to perform a piece again I would listen to old recordings and try to reproduce the material. This time I realized that carrying around old information, trying to get everything in, and still be in the moment just doesn't work.

A wonderful acting teacher I love, Josh Pais, has a system I love for being in the moment in acting, but also in life. And one of the things he reminds me of is to take a moment and just be here now.

I'm a very anxious person, and it's hard for me to be in the moment. Improv demands that you be in the moment.

You have to be sharp when the camera's rolling. I want to be totally unselfconscious, like a child playing. I do as much prep as possible so I can lose myself for those seconds.

I think it's very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you're in because, when you improvise, you're in right now. You're not in yesterday or tomorrow - you're right in the moment.

My whole process is based on meditation as well as listening really closely to what the director says and what the choreographer says. I try to stay in the immediate present reality with my partners on stage, give and take reality.

I think one of the things about listening is that it's always at its most powerful when it's present, when it's right here, when it's right now. And that's a lesson about improv that I think just made me a much more social person.

I try to not to overanalyze, not to watch myself too much, but to be present in life and in my art. I'm so glad it comes off in that way.

It's only when I'm on stage that I really come to terms with the fact that other people are hearing my most inner, darkest thoughts.

At the Cruiserweight Classic finale, I said... I don't know if people had looked it up, or if they had heard it before, but it was an old Zen proverb. 'Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, you chop wood, carry water.' It can be interpreted a lot of ways, but for the most part it's about staying in the moment.

When you sit in a café, with a lot of music in the background and a lot of projects in your head, you're not really drinking your coffee or your tea. You're drinking your projects, you're drinking your worries. You are not real, and the coffee is not real either. Your coffee can only reveal itself to you as a reality when you go back to your self and produce your true presence, freeing yourself from the past, the future, and from your worries. When you are real, the tea also becomes real and the encounter between you and the tea is real. This is genuine tea drinking.

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it.

Be. Here. NOW. Don't forget to breathe. When all else fails, grab a clown nose.

You don't need a plan; you just need to be present.

What we know matters, but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen. It requires us to dare greatly, to be vulnerable.

I'm here, and I do my best to be completely centered at the place I'm at, then I go forward to the next place.

Non-doing has nothing to do with being indolent or passive. Quite the contrary. It takes great courage and energy to cultivate non-doing, both in stillness and in activity. Nor is it easy to make a special time for non-doing and to keep at it in the face of everything in our lives which needs to be done.

I just need to make sure I don't get in my own way of a truthful and organic moment. Regardless of the research involved, at the end of the day, I have to show up, breathe, and listen.