If you want an audience start a fight.
—Irish Proverb
The program is nearly over! I can feel the audience is still with me but if I run faster I can shake them off
—Bob Hope (1903–2003) British-born American Comedian
It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one’s hand.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
I have no idea what the audience makes of me.
—Keith Richards (b.1943) English Singer, Songwriter, Musician, 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
You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before.
—Meryl Streep (b.1949) American Actor
Not an audience but a habit.
—Gian Carlo Menotti (1911–2007) Italian-born American Composer
The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
When [actors] are talking, they are servants of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor.
—Cedric Hardwicke (1893–1964) English Stage, Film Actor
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
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
Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama. Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Every crowd has a silver lining.
—P. T. Barnum (1810–91) American Businessperson, Entertainer
So far as I know, anything worth hearing is not usually uttered at seven o’clock in the morning; and if it is, it will generally be repeated at a more reasonable hour for a larger and more wakeful audience.
—Moss Hart (1904–61) American Dramatist, Director
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
The great orator always shows a dash of contempt for the opinions of his audience
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
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
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
To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
Don’t be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also
—Billy Wilder (1906–2002) American Filmmaker
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
If you give an audience a chance they will do half your acting for you.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
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
My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
God is a comic, playing to an audience that’s afraid to laugh.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
It is not whether you really cry. It’s whether the audience thinks you are crying.
—Ingrid Bergman (1915–82) Swedish Actor
I try to bring the audience’s own drama – tears and laughter they know about – to them.
—Judy Garland (1922–69) American Actress, Singer
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