Bo Burnham Quotes

My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan's 'The Browning Version,' where my job was to make school-masters' wives weep with recognition.

To put on a performance, you have to be emotional. You can't be a zombie.

When I go onstage, I'm going to work ...I feel like my performance is about an emotional connection. I want to connect with people, whether it's like a romantic song or a happy song.

I just know that when I go onstage, I give everything I have, not only my feet, not only my legs, not only my body. I try to tell a story. Sometimes I am able to cry because I feel like it. Sometimes I am able to love because I feel like it.

I do all the things that singer-songwriters do. I introduce the songs, I have a story to tell about everything all the time - I cannot be on stage and have something on my mind without telling the audience. I'm super emotional and expressive and vulnerable in that moment.

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 feel like when I go on stage I feel so excited at the prospect that there will be a true connection.

I don't really like the idea of putting myself in any category now... I think that people are looking for music that's real and honest and that they can relate to emotionally.

Standup is essentially part of your personality with the volume turned up.

I don't view interviewing as much of a performance. My whole life is in essence a performance but singing and dancing for television is an entirely different thing.

Put all your soul into it, play the way you feel!

I enjoy going on stage knowing that there's going to be that vulnerability and that transparency and hopefully things will be realized or accomplished or that confidence will be revealed. I think that's another element that people like about shows: in addition to hearing the songs that they love, I think there are some people who really get off on connecting with what's happening right now.

I don't even think whether I play the blues or not, I just play whatever feels right at the moment.

I love to write honest songs that name real people, then get up onstage and live out those emotions in front of 15,000 people.

Even if I sing like a robot, it is still an emotional robot.

I don't like working by a monitor. I stand right next to the camera, and I'm very performance-oriented. That really means everything to me, whether it's doing an improv of a joke or an emotional scene, and everything in between.

When I go on stage I am just, I don't make any attempts to do anything more than just what makes me comfortable.

I lose myself in my performances so I wouldn't say that I ever act on stage. I don't find it to be an acting drill for me. I just find it to be something very real that comes from a very gut-driven, honest place.

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.

A true artist should have no secrets. On the stage, you must be able to transmit every emotion to the spectator.

I tend to lose myself in the moment. I’m not very good at holding back. I don’t know how to do this without feeling everything. My emotions are the tool I use to perform.

You can over complicate everything with techniques; when you're in the moment, you have to feel that you are that character, that you're feeling the pain or the happiness or whatever it is that they're feeling in that moment. Usually the authenticity will manifest itself.

I'm just aware of what I'm thinking and feeling but I do obviously have to get that to the back of the auditorium. So there are things like projection and filling the room, and not dropping the ends of lines - technical things which are important, but I don't think they change the way I feel in a scene.

I don't think I ever worry too much about what our target audience is, what we should be releasing. I just write naturally and organically and try to write from the heart.

When I am most successful as a guitar player is when I'm able to just sort of lose myself. You stop thinking about technique or anything like that and just trying to evoke the emotion of that song brings, which is a very strong emotion for me.