John Philip Sousa Quotes

It wasn't so much that I was all alone on stage, but it was the realization of how much you need the response-you need the audience to tell you where to go.

I've never not appeared in front of a live audience for any longer period than a month or two.

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

Whenever I walk out on a stage, I'm begging for affection.

If I was going onstage, of course I would talk about it. How could I not?

I don't get stage fright, I actually love the energy, I love the spontaneity, I love the adrenaline you get in front of a live audience, it actually really works for me.

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 always a mix of apprehension and excitement before you try songs out on a new audience.

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.

There's some anxiety the 30 minutes before the show starts. But once you step on stage and face the people, everything goes away, and you have fun and enjoy the audience.

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.

It's quite pretentious, really, isn't it? The notion the audience is going to be interested in you for an hour and a half. Think too much about that and anxiety takes over.

Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10,000 people.

I have performed my one-man show '700 Sundays' over 400 times now. There were only two times that I can honestly say I was nervous. The first was when I knew Mel Brooks was in the audience, and the second was when Sid Caesar came.

There's such an adrenaline rush for me on stage and having all these people look at you. There's an adrenaline rush from not having things written down, too.

The stage always terrified me. The live audience is just one thing I bewilderingly look back on and say, 'How did I ever participate in that?'

It's one thing to practise in front of a mirror at home, but another to do it in front of 800 people or on live TV.

Not playing off of an audience is very challenging.

That's the thing: when I'm on stage, I don't care; there could be ten people there, there could be ten million people there. But if I'm offstage, I'm, like, counting the people. I know exactly where everyone's standing, how far they are from me.

I could have done a night at the O2 in London, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm not being big-headed, but for my act I can't be talking to an audience of 12,000 people. There's no intimacy.

Half the time, when I first run onstage, I can't look directly at the audience just because of self-consciousness. It's human nature. Sometimes you feel like the man, and sometimes you don't. But sometimes that self-conscious energy is good for the show, it draws people in more.

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.

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.

The first time I acted was in high school in Florida, and when I heard that applause I felt so alive and felt that electricity go up my spine.

Being on stage makes me come to life. When all eyes are on you, they're watching every move you make.