Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
—Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) American Journalist, Political Commentator, Writer
Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.
—Laurence Olivier (1907–89) English Actor, Producer, Director
A politician’s words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.
—George Will (b.1941) American Columnist, Journalist, Writer
I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) English Satirist, Novelist, Author
The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn’t stand the sight of the audience.
—John Cage (1912–92) American Composer
You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad – if you’re indifferent, Endsville.
—Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American Singer
I try to do something the audience might not have seen before. Like if I’m gonna kiss a girl I wanna kiss her like a girl has never been kissed. Like maybe I would kick her legs out from under her and catch her right before she hits the ground and then kiss her.
—Jim Carrey (b.1962) Canadian Actor, Comedian
If you really want to help the American theater, don’t be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.
—Tallulah Bankhead (1902–68) American Actress
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
I still get very scared when I step in front of a live audience.
—Adam Sandler (b.1966) American Actor
In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don’t want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
It is my custom to keep on talking until I get the audience cowed
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
A low trick I hate to stoop to is tying and untying my shoelaces. It seems to fascinate audiences probably because so many women in the audience have their shoes off, or wish they did.
—Edward Everett Horton (1886–1970) American Character Actor
If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn’t do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me – action pictures.
—Sylvester Stallone (b.1946) American Actor, Screenwriter, Director
I want people like some of you in this audience to be part of a Clinton administration, not because or in spite of your sexual orientation, but because America needs you
—Bill Clinton (b.1946) American Head of State, Lawyer, Public Speaker
If you want something from an audience, you give blood to their fantasies. It’s the ultimate hustle.
—Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American Film, Stage Actor
When a subject is highly controversial… one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
If you want an audience start a fight.
—Irish Proverb
Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.
—Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American Self-Help Author
The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.
—Michael Faraday (1791–1867) British Physicist, Chemist, Experimentalist
I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer’s body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.
—Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher
An opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses and keep up an indolent attention in the audience
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within, going abroad only for audience, and spectator, as we adapt our voice and phrase to the distance and character of the ear we speak to
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The audience is the best judge of anything. They cannot be lied to. Truth brings them closer. A moment that lags – they’re gonna cough.
—Barbra Streisand (b.1942) American Musician, Actor, Songwriter
We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
—Alan Watts (1915–73) British-American Philosopher, Author
I am a real ham. I love an audience. I work better with an audience. I am dead, in fact, without one.
—Lucille Ball (1911–89) American Actor, Comedian, Model
Applause that comes thundering with such force you might think the audience merely suffers the music as an excuse for its ovations.
—Greil Marcus (b.1945) American Music Journalist, Cultural Critic
I try to bring the audience’s own drama – tears and laughter they know about – to them.
—Judy Garland (1922–69) American Actress, Singer
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience 4000 critics
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.
—Lenny Bruce (1925–66) American Comedian, Writer, Social Critic, Satirist
If you have any interests you can gain a wider audience for those interests while the goldfish bowl is yours!
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
And who knows? Somewhere out there in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president’s spouse. I wish him well!
—Barbara Bush (1925–2018) American First Lady
Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.
—George Carlin (1937–2008) American Stand-up Comedian
An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark—that is critical genius.
—Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American Filmmaker
The director is simply the audience. So the terrible burden of the director is to take the place of that yawning vacuum, to be the audience and to select from what happens during the day which movement shall be a disaster and which a gala night. His job is to preside over accidents.
—Orson Welles (1915–85) American Film Director, Actor
In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.
—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali Poet, Polymath
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.
—Jimmy Buffett (b.1946) American Musician, Author
Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.
—James Maitland Stewart (1908–97) American Film Actor
By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more and not merely to spend our feelings.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
There are wonderful things in real jazz, the talent for improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience.
—Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French Painter, Sculptor, Lithographer
The great orator always shows a dash of contempt for the opinions of his audience
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher