Captivating an Audience Quotes

When it's my show, I know that everybody is there to see me - but I like a challenge, and I like the fact that at festivals, not everybody is there to see me, but I have the chance to convert people.

As long as I can make an audience feel something, I don't care whether it's a good thing or bad thing, just to feel something is important to me.

There've been periods where I had to convince the audience or win them over.

We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.

When I'm talking to a large audience, I imagine that I'm talking to a single person.

When we were younger, playing a bar or a club, we did what we did to get as many people to like what we were doing. I wanted the person in the back of the room to like it as much as the ones in the front. That's how I've always looked at it.

It is one thing to rouse the passion of a people, and quite another to lead them.

I like entertaining people. I like being on stage. I like being in the life. This is what I do. This is the only thing I know how to do besides rob people and fight. Even when I was robbing people, I was entertaining them. But that's just what I love doing.

One of the hardest things in the world is to perform on record and get someone to enjoy and feel what you're doing. It's unlike, like TV you can, you can fake it with the face and the crying and the bits. Recording is completely different.

When you stand on the stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.

The audience usually has to be with you, I'm afraid. I always regarded myself as not even preaching to the converted, I was titillating the converted.

The true meaning of an artist/actor is opening my heart to the audience and, at the same time, opening their heart.

Playing in front of an audience was just such a turn-on for me, and you have 200 people in the audience and it's like doing live theater. And filming something that goes to millions of people several weeks later, it's an interesting dynamic.

In singing, you cannot 'cheat' if you want to give emotions to those who are listening. You must have something to tell.

I think if you've got people on your side, if you've got people really laughing, you are able to make them cry.

You're in front of an audience, but you're playing for a camera. There's this huge adrenaline rush, because you know that besides the audience in the studio, there are millions of people watching at home.

I knew I couldn't sing over them, so I decided to sing under them. The more noise they made the more softly I sang. When they discovered they couldn't hear me, they began to look at me. Then they began to listen. As I sang, I kept thinking, 'softly with feeling.' The noise dropped to a hum; the hum gave way to silence. I had learned how to reach and hold my audience -- softly, with feeling.

Drawing a good picture is like telling a really good lie - the key is in the incidental detail.

I learned that by being entertaining you make a connection with another person.

If you are given only one opportunity to speak, be certain your voice is heard.

If you can make yourself popular in front of any audience, you can use it anywhere.

In Vegas, you have an audience you can't find anywhere else. It's from all over the country. You play Seattle, everyone's from Seattle. But in Vegas, you have six from Seattle, a bunch from L.A., some local Las Vegans and maybe a farmer from Iowa. In Vegas, you learn the ins and outs of holding a room because of that great spectrum of folks.

If you can sing to a room of 60 people who don't give a damn, then if, someday, you're playing to people who really want to hear your music, that's not hard.

I definitely enjoy an audience, when I'm performing. As I get older I'm kind of less comfortable at being demonstrative. I always fancied myself as a raconteur, but that never really worked out.

What excites me? Had you asked me that question a few years ago, the answer would’ve rolled right off my tongue. Today, I think it's moving and uplifting my audience. Having them get it and go with it. That excites me.