Quotes About Improvisation

Many of the stranger but most frequently quoted scenes in 'Billy Madison' were unplanned.

Creativity is an infinite resource. The more you spend,the more you have.

No battle plan can anticipate all contingencies. There are always unexpected factors including those stemming from the opponent's initiative. A battle must thus becomes a balance between plan and improvisation, between error and correction. It is a narrow line. But it is a line one's opponent must also walk. For all the balance of experience and cleverness, it is often the warrior who acts quickest who will prevail.

Love wasn't a piece of music you could play over and over again with different interpretations. It actually needed to be improvised as you went along.

But first we have to accept the idea that thinking long and hard about something does not always deliver us better results, and that the brain actually evolved to make us think on our feet.

I am a hopeless pantser, so I don't do much outlining. A thought will occur to me, and I'll just throw it into the story. I tell myself I'll worry about untangling it later. I'm glad no one sees my first drafts except for my poor editor and agent.

It never occurred to me that I'd be a musician. I was just drunk on music, jamming with friends, chilling out with lot of music around.

I think I compose as a listener: improvising and listening back excites me because I get to ideas that never would have occurred. Then I bring in the computers and samplers... and I begin to loop and process and change them.

I can't imagine doing anything without being an improviser. I can't imagine trying to write or act or direct without what improvising offers you.

For me, jazz offers so much freedom in the way the music can be interpreted. It's natural to me. It's where I feel most free.

I think there are actors who are like, 'Okay, what am I doing, how am I doing it, what's the appeal? Tell me what to do, what are the exact lines from the script? Okay, I got it.' I am not that way. I would be a terrible bus driver. I'd want to be like, 'Oh, let's take this side road! Let's see what happens when we go down this back alley.'

Basically, I try to let the song dictate what guitar I use. If it's a really loud, crazy song, I'll pull out the cheapest, oldest guitar I own, one that feeds back easily. But most of the time, I just use whatever's around.

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues.

I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it's like a dialogue.

I think it's still kind of weird to memorize a line, because you're supposed to 'be' this person, you know? So then its like, if I'm really this person, how can I be in the moment if I know there's just one line I'm supposed to say? It doesn't feel natural. I always just kind of want to say whatever comes up.

After doing 'Life After Beth,' which I think had one line that wasn't scripted, everything was scripted so that it sounds natural, and I went to such great lengths to create dialogue and to come across the way that people wouldn't sound like they were on the nose.

But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things.

One thing about playing the real jazz is that you can't count it.

Being an only child, I was alone a lot and I had to make up games.

Plays are frequently infected with ideas that came from actors or even sound engineers. Some Shakespeare scholars wonder whether some of the Bard's lines came from onstage improvisations by actors.

You never know what's going to happen next onstage.

I don't practice or write stuff down - everything I do onstage was just made up before I went on.

I was onstage singing with Luke Bryan, and he started singing a song that we hadn't rehearsed. Both Luke and myself just winged it.

I didn't know if I could be funny on stage or write a joke. But I saw that there are no rules. If you're funny offstage, you can figure out a way to be funny onstage.