Quotes About Spontaneity

After my final semester at Yale in December of 2013, I made a scary choice. Instead of looking for work - feeling over-read and underweight - that for a few months I would go wherever the wind carried me. I would become a student of the world, and I would eat.

When I met Michael Jordan on a basketball court at an athletic club - we hooped together in Chicago - he came to me and asked me if I wanted to do a song for his upcoming movie. I was like, 'Yeah!' I didn't even ask what it was.

Yeah, it's more like playing what you think is appropriate for the moment. It's not about trying to force any particular style within the parameters - and the parameters we play in are pretty large!

Yeah, now we publish whenever we feel like it.

It scared me to death to think about improv, but I got hired for a year at Second City in Chicago, which made me nervous, but I found I could improvise. Then I was in a group called the Ace Trucking Company, which we'd do, like, a half hour set of material, then open up for improvisation.

If there's something I really like or a chord progression, I write a note in my Blackberry, and maybe a year later, I'll revisit it and ask, 'What did I like about that?' I really don't try to think too much about it. I like to be fresh.

I think you should be a child for as long as you can. I have been successful for 74 years being able to do that. Don't rush into adulthood, it isn't all that much fun.

Some years ago I became president of Columbia University and learned within 24 hours to be ready to speak at the drop of a hat, and I learned something more, the trustees were expected to be ready to speak at the passing of the hat.

On 'Sin Nombre,' Adriano Goldman and I improvised a lot of things on-site. We were working with untrained actors, and you can't really block a scene in a traditional way.

The world is a slightly better place for having improvisation in it than it was before. There's something about it that says something positive about the human spirit, that a bunch of people can get together and by following a few simple traffic rules can create art and can entertain an audience and can thrill and exalt each other.

My lyrics are quite train of thought, and they are all over the place, but they evoke something.

I think it's better when you're natural, when you just do whatever you want, instead of doing classes where I see all these other people holding back because they've been trained with certain skills or techniques. I'm like, whatever.

I'm not classically trained or anything, but I'll rip up a dance floor.

I'm not an amazingly trained soul singer, so with me it's about feeling and energy and spontaneity - that's a really big part of who I am.

I don't do anything on stage that allows me to become a trained seal, where you're just doing the same thing over and over.

Theatre sports is the best improv training period.

If you could build a house on a trampoline, that would suit me fine.

I was 16. In the middle of the night, I took a taxi to the Detroit train station - or maybe it was the Pontiac train station? - and got on a train to Chicago, then transferred to a train to San Diego where my boyfriend was living at the time.

There is something transformative about the act of finding your own way without a to-do list.

Animated films are so precisely engineered - right down to forming lines of dialogue with words pulled from several different takes - how do you translate that spontaneity from the live-action to the digital realm?

Life is nothing to be very serious about. Life is a ball in your hands to play with. Don't hold on to the ball.

life is a ball we should play with it !

Some of the happiest moments in life result from rash decisions. You should try it sometime.

Sometimes when we have to speak suddenly we come closer to the truth than when we have time to think.