Quotes About Perception

Even as one and the same person is called by different names according to the different functions he performs, so also one and the same mind is called by the different names: mind, intellect, memory, and egoity, on account of the difference in the modes - and not because of any real difference.

People know who you are when you've never met them. For them, through interviews and seeing you perform, they feel like they know you and you've never seen them before. It's really different, but it's awesome.

One performs a very different act when reading a movie and when reading a novel. Your attention behaves differently.

When I perform onstage, I'm actually kind of nearsighted, so I don't have any real, true understanding of what the audience is like.

There is a misperception, if you will, in critical response or even in Hollywood, that I can only do exaggerated characters. Or what they would call over-the-top performances. Well, this is completely false.

As actors, we are expected to come up with an exaggerated performance, which is far from reality.

The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.

When you see my performances, even people that you might have known, like Nicky Barnes in 'American Gangster,' you have to get over the fact that I look like Cuba Gooding, Jr. But once you find truth in the performance, if I'm doing my job right, you believe everything.

I thought his performance was absolutely wonderful and had said so, but he seemed, as actors quite often are when they first see something, to be disappointed. I think he expected more from the film and himself.

The routines of any ethnic comic - Eddie Murphy or George Lopez, for example - would not work if they were performed by anybody outside the group. The same routines would become arrogant and racist.

When Andy Kaufman performed, he was not just trying to be funny. He was playing with the notion of what it means to try to be funny, of what it means to be an audience expecting somebody to be funny. He was doing a dance and playing a game.

As a performer you often feel that you're the child and everyone else is a grown-up.

The thing I fail to do is fully comprehend what's given back to me by the audience. You would think you would be a performer partly so you could feel all the appreciation or adulation, but I haven't quite managed that yet.

I'm 90% performer, 10% musician. I've always said that Gossip are a band I would go see, not a band I would listen to.

I remember I had a boyfriend a long time ago who said, 'You need to change your name; you sound like a circus performer.'

You put me in the room with my family and everyone I grew up with, and I'd be the last person that you'd say is the performer.

I want to change how people perceived me when I came over here, change how the people perceive South-East Asians or Middle Eastern or Muslim or Hindu or whatever their identity is. I want them to just let that go and treat the performer as a performer.

I'm one of the most popular cabaret performers, and I don't sing a note. And nobody expects me to sing.

To others we are not ourselves but performers in their lives cast for a part we do not even know we are playing.

I thought that maybe it is not so much, as he seems to think, that the world loses interest in female performers after they hit a certain age, than the performers lose interest in the world.

For a lot of pop performers, fame and celebrity is part of the job. But for singer-songwriters, no one really cares.

I think people have a misconception about comedians and performers. All that stuff is serious business.

I like the feeling of not knowing where to look when you are only performing for one person or watching someone practice. It creates this kind of a strange in-between, which can be mirrored in the feeling of making a painting.

Music at times is more like perfume than mathematics.