Performance Magic Quotes

When you're onstage and the audience is smiling and singing and bopping along and you're all on the same level, it's the best feeling in the world. It may sound dumb and corny to say it, but it's like pure love.

It's easier to see in someone else, another actor, how they kind of disappear and then this other persona appears. A great actor is a thing of mystery.

When I finished performing 'I Won't Give Up' for the first time, I opened my eyes, and I think there was maybe six people in there when I started, and when I finished there was about 30 people, all standing around with their jaws dropped in complete silence. I said, 'Okay, I think this song has some power to it.' So coffee shops work for me.

At Vienna, one of the audience affirmed publicly that my performance was not surprising, for he had distinctly seen, while I was playing my variations, the devil at my elbow, directing my arm and guiding my bow. My resemblance to the devil was a proof of my origin.

I have a genuine love affair with my audience. When I'm on stage they're not privileged to see me. It's a privilege for me to see them.

There were radio shows where you actually got to hear people play off of each other and get that immediate magic that goes on. And rather than doing what a lot of shows do, where an individual comes in, reads their part, and you edit it together later on and try to build a performance, we're lucky because this is really very much a theatrical performance that is going on, every single week.

With Fleetwood Mac, it's an amazing chemistry that we have on stage.

I tour with a piano, actually. Luckily I am able to hire people that deal with it completely and magically a piano appears on stage and then magically disappears when I leave.

When I play for the people, every time I play for my audience they are hypnotized, seen. These guys know the potential of the music.

Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.

It's probably my favorite part of my whole showbiz experience, is Broadway. The community of Broadway. That feeling that happens every night.

On so many levels, acting in film and TV is so much the sum of its parts, and somewhere in there, there's an alchemical thing that makes something happen or not - that makes something connect or not. Now, of course you want to make work that people see, but the enjoyment I get out of acting is playing characters.

If ever I feel I might be able to tackle it, I'd love to try holding a spear or something in the theater, or opening a door, or anything, just to try it, you know, because it must be some marvelous magic thing.

All my life I wanted to play music with love to every member of the audience.

For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.

Something magic happens when I get to a club or get on stage.

When you first start singing something after you've written it, it has this sort of sparkle to it. And if you capture that, that's luck.

You know, whatever happens between the two of us that's created when we come together as actors is not something I think we can explain.

Wandering around back stage at a willie Nelson concert is a bit like being the parrot on the shoulder of the guy who's running the Ferris wheel. It's not the best seat in the house, but you see enough lights, action, people, and confusion to make you wonder if anybody knows what the hell's going on. If you're sitting out front, of course, it all rolls along as smoothly as a German train schedule, but as Willie, like any great magician, would be the first to point out, the real show is never in the center ring. As Willie always says, Fortunately, we're not in control.

You write a character, but in essence, it's just a concept of what it could be, and then actors come in and they have their own sort of interpretations and thoughts. If you respond to those and then go forward with them, then it's kind of like magic to see the idea you had become alive and in the flesh.

When people feel that something really special is happening on the stage, things change.

There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.

Sometimes during a ballet I'll look around and see all these rows of intent faces, concentrating on this beautiful thing up on the stage.

Ten years ago, TV cookery shows were about a man or a woman following recipes. Now, it's all about journeys and campaigns and less about the actual chopping and dicing. That's what I'd like to do with magic.

One of my favorite things to do, when the ghost light is on and it's just an empty stage - I'll let my shadow spread right across the theater, and I just say to myself, 'For the next few hours, these folks are my responsibility. I get to share in something that is unique.' It's like church.