Anthony Hopkins Quotes

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never been interested in that.

The stage is my comfort zone, and playing live is what I've always wanted to do. It's why I want to do two hundred dates a year. I wouldn't feel that way if I were nervous onstage.

When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.

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!

Performing live in front of an audience is such a matter of will - all of those things you can do just fine in your basement, suddenly you have to do them in front of hundreds or thousands of people, and it becomes a different matter entirely.

I still get thrilled by the energy that is a live performance, the fear and the panic and the electricity that happens on the night. I think jolting myself every once in a while with that fear is a good thing for me.

When you're on stage you have a very strange knowledge of what the audience is. It isn't exactly a sound - it's a hum, like the streets.

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

I find a similarity between performing music onstage and acting - a reality of emotion.

From the first time you can look in the paper and you accept that you're the entertainment for some people that night, it becomes so much more enjoyable to play live.

My live performance, it just comes from feeling an energy and emotion from the crowd.

I never feel more alive than when I'm on stage. On film you feel chopped up, you can be acting from the neck up, or the hand, there is a lot of close up.

Performing live is easy in front of an audience.

I get a little teary on stage sometimes. It can be really emotional when it dawns on you that people are singing along and having fun.

When I'm on stage, I know exactly where I am. It's not an ego thing or anything like that, but I am more in my body and aware of myself and aware of what I'm doing, and I feel more from that, from sharing the music.

When I go onstage, every situation I have to play, I feel pain. When I sing 'Madama Butterfly' I feel completely everything she felt: It's horrible.

There are times I've been surprised by how emotional I can be on stage.

When I perform live, I'm doing a lot, but I kind of black out. I don't think about it too much.

I like to talk to the audience once the show starts, as much as possible, and feel connected to them. I don't feel quite as nervous when I do that because, then, you feel like they're on your side.

In a sense, touring is crazy. You go city to city playing the show over and over again. But there's something magic about being in front of people, so it's not like going through the motions every night. It's a different experience.

I'm always nervous about it. You know, somehow, without even knowing it, I try and recreate the idea of what it feels like to go in front of an audience every night when I'm making a film. And that similar type of pressure and excitement before a scene, or preparing for a movie, so...

I feel like you've gotta be able to get up every night in front of a live audience. Whether it's 10 people or 50 people or a hundred people, whether you're in a rock band or doing the comedy circuit.

Whenever I'm onstage, I try my best not to think that I'm performing. It's simply another part of my day.

The process with the play, obviously, it belongs to you by the time you're stepping on stage in front of that audience for the first time. You can change it by just a look or things you're not even conscious of, but it's such a full immersion.