Suzanne Farrell Quotes

When you are on stage you are having an affair with three thousand people.

To me, performing means trying to do the most you can with the partner in front of you, with the story you're telling. There are actors who have carried me, who have brought me elsewhere or with them.

I was always the lead role in plays. I like entertaining people. I like when you're on stage doing crazy stuff and the audience gets it.

Acting is the most communicative thing I can imagine doing.

I do my best creating on stage.

I love my lecture tours. I get up onstage. I have my stack of books and a glass of water and a microphone. No podium, no distance between me and the audience, and I just talk to people and get all excited and tell a lot of jokes, and sing some songs, and read from my work and remind people how powerful they are and how beautiful they are.

I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. Somebody asked me 'What is acting?' And I said, 'Acting is listening.' And if you ain't listening, nobody's listening.

One thing changes every evening: It's the audience, and I'm working my magic. I'm always learning from it.

An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.

Acting is like any other art form, in that you have the option to go very big or go very small.

I love performing in front of an audience. I like the questions; I like controversy.

The biggest impact that acting and theater had was, of course, stage presence, but it also had a big impact on my writing.

I always knew that if I was ever going to perform something that I wrote in front of an audience, I was going to do the thing I most like to experience as an audience member, which is to be tricked.

I'm very proud of the work I do, but I genuinely can't involve myself with an audience as early as somebody who's not part of the film can. So there's that side of theater that appeals to me, where you give something and the response to what you've created is a communion between you and the dark that contains however many people. It's thrilling not having a reflection other than through the people you're communicating with. But people ask, "What do you prefer?" and I don't have a preference. I love them both. I really do.

When I started in the theater, the joy for me was playing different parts, and I get set alight by different people and different worlds. The biggest joy for me is jumping around and going from that to this to that, never feeling that I'm any one thing - because I'm not, and we as people aren't.

When I'm speaking in front of 15 and 20,000 people and I'm up there using a lot of motion, I guess in it's own way, it's a pretty healthy act. I really enjoy doing it. A lot of times these rooms are very hot, like saunas, and I guess that is a form of exercise and, you know?

Performing live is like harvesting your crops and sharing your food with people.

The talking shows allow me to come out of my cave and that's why those shows go on for so long. I hate walking off stage. Sometimes I walk off and I miss them as I'm walking off the stage. I wonder if they'll let me go another hour. That's why I do it: to communicate, to get points across.

There's nothing more vulnerable than just standing in front of a thousand people, or ten thousand people, and doing your best to entertain them, touch them in some way.

My ability has always been to walk out on the stage and see the audience and figure out what they wanna hear.

When you're performing, you're creating a moment.

My life has always been my music, it's always come first, but the music ain't worth nothing if you can't lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, 'cause what you're there for is to please the people.

I want actors. I want to be with other people. I don't wanna be alone, because of the connection when you're in a room, in a scene with someone, and it comes to life. You feel like the moment is something magic.

Acting is a different discipline. On stage I'm free to say what I please. But the change is very good for ya.

When I'm on stage, that's me. It's blown up, but that's me.