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Performance Quotes


"A lawyer's performance in the courtroom is responsible for about 25 percent of the outcome; the remaining 75 percent depends on the facts."


"Every superior personality, and every superior performance, has, for the average of mankind, something mysterious."



"From protecting our natural resources to providing maritime security and national defense, the Coast Guard's duties are broad in scope, and the performance of those duties has never been more important."


"As far as performance, the roar of the crowd, the smell of the greasepaint no I don't feel that."


"Conductors don't suffer, they are part of the performance."


"I still get really nervous, though, before each performance. It kind of hits about 15 minutes before we go onstage - sometimes I don't even want to go on. But once I'm onstage I'm fine."


"An emotional performance is usually more instinctive to an actor."


"No, we've been performing our old songs a little differently each performance."


"I know that I'm never as good or bad as any single performance. I've never believed my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena."


"Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality."


"I think I was first to do live performances on a modern electronic sound synthesizer."



"Did you know I staged the first performance in America of At the Hawk's Well?"


"I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone."



"I think you can really tell a good actor if you can put a camera on them and they can just talk and emote and react and you don't have to keep cutting away from them, because they are the language and the behavior. It's all a tour-de-force performance."


"I wouldn't do nudity in films. For me, personally... To act with my clothes on is a performance; to act with my clothes off is a documentary."


"My guess is many top athletes, distance runners included, use performance-enhancing drugs, enough so that the problem must be tackled."


"The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner."


"Performance is your reality. Forget everything else."


"My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise."


"Nobody has ever said anything about Marion Jones every using performance-enhancing drugs and they never will."


"The kindest word to describe my performance in school was Sloth."


"I think it hurt my performance because I stopped being me. That won't ever happen again."


"I'm much more energetic now; you might say live performance is my mission."



"Inside was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience."


"Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Nonperformance can always be explained away."


"Before every performance, I think I am about to keel over."



"The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally."


"The eating of burning brimstone is an entirely fake performance."


"What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition."



"I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that's the most fun."


"It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance."


"The thing that's characteristic of my performance is that I literally do drag the whole studio onto the stage."


"It was more freeing, mainly because he's so free anyway. He just is in his performance. So to mimic someone doing a free performance, well, that's pretty freeing within itself."


"To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it. What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come."


"Jackie considered his resurrection, the world's best return performance."


"This kind of prelude was succeeded by the concerto itself which he executed with a degree of spirit and firmness that no one has ever pretended to equal."


"Pitching... sometimes I did so poorly, it brought me to tears."


"A particular shot or way of moving the ball can be a player's personal signature, but efficiency of performance is what wins the game for the team."


"I've done scenes in films that I felt like the performance was better in certain takes, but they couldn't use them because it didn't match what the person was doing when they came around and the camera was on them."


"I'm on performance enhancing drugs, so I may cause drowsiness."


"When a team outgrows individual performance and learns team confidence, excellence becomes a reality."


"I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena."


"We need improvement in the style of performance. There is no more advantage in a musician who plays and conducts than in one who is only a beater of rhythm."


"It is something we have always excelled at and prided ourselves at - the excellences of our stage performance."


"Sayles could pull a performance out of a dog. I'm serious. He was just amazing. The world could fall apart and he remained on neutral."


"Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance."



"The one that sang, old Janine, was always whispering into the g***** microphone before she sang. She'd say, 'And now we like to geeve you our impression of Vooly Voo Fransay. Eet ees the story of leetle Fransh girl who comes to a beeg ceety, just like New York, and falls een love wees a leetle boy from Brookleen. We hope you like eet.' Then, when she was all done whispering and being cute as hell, she'd sing some dopey song, half in English and half in French, and drive all the phonies in the place mad with joy."


"Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the "naturals," the ones who somehow know how to teach."


"All I have is my performance, I try to feed in the best of everything that I could possibly do into those 90 minutes and to make a live entertainment show out of it."
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