Quotes About Improvisation

Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty.

I try not to make plans. Because, even the best laid plans etc. etc.

The best practice you can get is on the bandstand, but in between gigs I feel I have to stay in shape.

In both the art and the business worlds, the difference between the amateurs and the professionals is simple: The professionals know they're winging it. The amateurs pretend they're not.

Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune.

I was so wild and crazy and dumb in my car. It didn't run but 30 miles an hour. You made do.

Everything I needed was in my car, even the chickens

Remember that scene in the first Indiana Jones movie when someone asks Indy what he's going to do next, and he replies, "I don't know, I'm making it up as we go along." That's how I view leadership. It's an act of controlled improvisation, a Thelonious Monk finger exercise, from one moment to the next.

No toques el saxofón, déjate tocar por él. CHARLIE PARKER

Quantum theory had the strangest genesis," Ball says. "Its pioneers made it up as they went along. What else could they do?

We made it up and then we were stuck with what we made up.

I thought: But isn't this a dance? Isn't all of this a dance? Isn't that what we do with words? Isn't that what we do when we talk, when we spar, when we make plans or leave it to chance? Some of it's choreographed. Some of the steps have been done for ages. And the rest—the rest is spontaneous. The rest has to be decided on the floor, in the moment, before the music ends.

For you, anything." And as I did as I was instructed, I realized it was no different than playing a wind instrument. There were other musicians behind other curtains, and I swore I could hear them chiming in, the group of us forming God's own horn section. I'm not sure how long I lay there, blissed-out and farting.

We heads of state really prefer to have some sort of an agenda before we sit down at the high-stakes table, you know. All bad novelists notwithstanding, surprise and improvisation are not the best basis for successful diplomacy!

In a clutch or a corner, I tend to make a weapon out of what is near at hand. That can be anything from a crowbar to a cat, though if I had a choice, I would prefer an angry cat, which I have found to be more effective than a crowbar. Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies. It's a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can. ~Odd Thomas

The life of an actor is sort of abnormal in the sense where you never know what's going to happen, which I've really given over to.

When I develop a character, I usually start by creating a backstory with whatever information I have access to.

U2 is sort of song writing by accident really. We don't really know what we're doing and when we do, it doesn't seem to help.

That's the way it happens - some characters you set out to use, some are happy accidents. As long as it works, it doesn't really matter how you got them.

The important thing is not to know where you are going, to be open to accidents. That's what keeps it fun.

There is no right in acting.

Even if you plan your book, the actual writing is unplanned.

A lot of my best stuff is just ad libs on stage, and that's one thing that I've gotten back to at the live show.

We wrote 'Tush' at a soundcheck in Alabama in about six or eight minutes.