Quotes About Stage

My sisters used to learn dance, and I used to stand behind them and dance. So my guruji suggested that I also learn, as I seemed interested. I started learning at the age of three and was always on stage for something or the other. My mother is proud of me, and clearly my artistic bent comes from her.

In 1977, I wrote a series of poems about a character, Black Bart, a former cattle rustler-turned-alchemist. A good friend, Claude Purdy, who is a stage director, suggested I turn the poems into a play.

In a sense, the rumours suggesting I had quit were true: I had retired, but only from the personal-appearance end. I did that because I had always felt conspicuous onstage, and I'm not the sort of person who likes to be an exhibitionist.

The school suit allows me to be an extrovert. Basically, I'm the opposite of what I am on stage.

As a kid, I remember wearing a checkered suit and appearing on-stage in the routines worked out by the 'baggy pants' comedians.

I think our strongest suit is our live show.

I was more used to acting onstage, for a long time. I don't know, maybe I was temperamentally more suited to stage stuff. And there are things about the stage that I miss in a lot of ways.

My idea was you can't dress for the stage, you have to dress all the time like you're onstage. And so I would just always wear suits or some form of it. I wanted people to know I played music. That was kind of how you would find other people: you would just walk around looking a certain way and end up meeting someone who liked the way you look.

I don't think anyone's particularly conscious of thinking suits are the thing, but when you see a comedian on stage in jeans and a t-shirt it doesn't matter how good they are - it always looks like amateur hour when they walk onto the stage.

I'm used to people being a mile away. That suits me. It's more nerve-wracking playing in front of people who are two feet away from me.

Now, I was the Summer Concert guy. I played every Summer concert there was.

When I was in New York, I was making a living. We had a summer house and a car that I could put in a garage. That's something for a stage actor.

I started out in summer stock, and that's really what I prefer.

When you're singing before 15,000 people at a summer concert outside, you need to look beautiful, because that's what people want.

My dream is to play Coachella, main stage, when the sun's going down.

I mean, I guess I started during the comedy boom, so it was literally like, on Sunday you could decide you wanted to be a comic, and on Monday, you could be on stage.

Doing my Broadway show '700 Sundays' reminded me how much I love working in front of an audience.

I have performed my one-man show '700 Sundays' over 400 times now. There were only two times that I can honestly say I was nervous. The first was when I knew Mel Brooks was in the audience, and the second was when Sid Caesar came.

The little song and dance number at the end - that's me, my voice, howling out. It was a new experience for me. I've never sung before and I've certainly never sung on screen. I think I sung on stage when I was 13 and for some reason nobody's asked me to try it again since.

The nice thing about doing a pop opera - in the way that doing, say, 'Miss Saigon' or 'Les Miz' would be - is that, because the convention is set from the beginning that this is an opera and everything is sung, there is never that feeling of 'Why is this person bursting out into song?' because the whole thing is sung.

I can perform easily; I don't mind getting up in front of people at all. I've always sung and felt confident about that, and guitar playing isn't a stretch, but songwriting is. We all have our challenges in what we do, and that's mine.

I wear sunglasses almost all the time except when I'm on stage.

I started using sunglasses in Alabama. I was going to do a show with Patsy Cline and Bobby Vee, and I left my clear glasses on the plane. I only had the sunshades, and I was quite embarrassed to go onstage with them, but I did it.

The only reason we wore sunglasses onstage was because we couldn't stand the sight of the audience.