Mark Billingham Quotes

It's one of the things that looks good written down, but the reality is that you think about the pieces you're doing and try to bear in mind everyone in the audience.

I'm an entertainer. If people are paying good money for tickets they deserve the best show they can see. I don't get into lighting stuff on fire, but I do believe in going the extra mile.

I feel like every time I go out, I want to do a good job. I want people to say that he's just as good at stand-up as he is in some of the movies I've seen him in, so I try to do the best every time I go out there.

I'm very conscious that I'm an entertainer. Something like 73 percent of my readers are college graduates, so you can't condescend to people. You've got to tell them a story that they will be willing to pay money to read.

A performance is only as good as the audience you are playing to. A lot of times you feed off of the audience, and we always try to give them all we've got and sometimes you don't get a lot back, but we've never been dead whenever we've performed.

I've always been one for show business. I like performing, and I used to get criticized for having production value. But now it's all that! People need to get what they pay for! Otherwise, just listen to recorded music.

On any given night - there are nights that you feel better. There are nights that you are vocally better. There are nights that you are not as vocally good. No question about it.

You won't see me at a microphone singing and tapping my foot. I spend a lot of money on sets, costumes and sound. I believe people deserve a show. I'm a singer, musician, dancer. I work hard, and I'm soaking wet when I come off.

There are a lot of singers who cannot sing to save their lives. We have to accept it, but thank God there is such a thing as live shows. It's only when people are faced with live shows that the world gets to know how good or how bad they are.

You either entertain an audience or you don't.

We still have that same burn, to get that same kind of laughs. So whether the studio wants us to or not, we're going to do it. The money is just a byproduct of coming out with good stuff. Our whole thing is building that rapport with the audience.

One wants to entertain the audience till the end. Sometimes, the desire is never-dying, as ANR garu once said. The caveat is that one has to be watchful of public reception.

Every time an artiste goes on stage, he thinks 'I hope today goes well and I hope I give my best.' That is important - that little bit of nervousness or tension is what makes you perform better.

I study entertainment and apply it to myself to one day become the greatest WWE superstar we have, and it's a lot of work. So I write jokes and material every day... you have to keep people's attention, one way or another.

Any audience, as a rule, goes for a fast number.

Why would you get up there and bore people? I never have figured that out. These people are supposedly in the entertainment industry, and they finally get up there to that podium and they become the most boring people in the world.

It's about having personality...it's not about being the bad guy, it's about entertaining people.

I don't really think about the crowd when I am in the middle. I actually forget about the crowd, forget the money; that's exactly what I always do.

If you look at the Karamazov Brothers on TV, they're really small and the heart is taken out of their act. That's true for most variety acts. I'm an exception. When the camera comes in close and looks at those soap bubbles, you can really see what bubbles do.

I'd rather be entertained and go to a show and watch a drummer and have somebody that makes me actually smile. So I don't judge drummers based on their technical ability; I judge them based on the overall package and what they bring to the music they're part of.

Stand-up is every man for himself; you learn from hanging out at these clubs and watching other guys, and then trying not to be like them.

There are so many wonderful shows that come out through the year. What makes some stick is an unknown factor, you know? It's gotta be the right show at the right time. Really, you've got to have magic elements line up. But I felt that this was going to be something that was really going to ring true to people.

I always knew I could hold people's attention and make them laugh every 30 or 40 seconds, and I got approval and attention for that, so the behavior was reinforced. Later, that became an important skill on the street corner.

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.

Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too.