Improvising Quotes

• And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Life, Sad, Writing

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.85, Anchor

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• The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.545, Anchor

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• Life is a lot like jazz. It's best when you improvise.

  George Gershwin

  Music, Jazz Hands, Cool Jazz

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

  Charles Darwin

  Teamwork, Creativity, Knowledge

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution”, p.23, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• I love being onstage. I love the relationship with the audience. I love the letting go, the sense of discovery, the improvising.

  Stephen Colbert

  Letting Go, Love Is, Discovery

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• You're gonna need a bigger boat.

  Peter Benchley

  Inspirational, Movie, Radio News

  "Fictional character: Chief Martin Brody". "Jaws", www.imdb.com. June 20, 1975.

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• I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti

  Thomas Harris

  Movie, Nice, Great Year

  "The Silence of the Lambs". www.imdb.com. 1991.

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• I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame.

  Steve Carell

  Moving, Character, Games

  "First Banana". Interview with Tad Friend, www.newyorker.com. July 5, 2010.

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• I think when people talk about improvising it turns into this silly thing like, "Oh there's like a hula hoop there and I'm like 'Oh what's going on here? Is this a really big ring?'"

  Aziz Ansari

  Silly, Thinking, People

  "Aziz Ansari and Dilshad Vadsaria On Set Interview 30 Minutes or Less". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. May 10, 2011.

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• Yeah, improvising only really works 100% when you're with somebody.

  Bill Hader

  Yeah

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• The challenge is, well, there's a huge challenge, which is when you're improvising, you're meant to sort of clear your mind completely, just be open and funny, and paying, you know, paying attention.

  Brian Henson

  Challenges, Mind, Attention

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Improvisation is about finding the best joke or the silliest way to get something across. Improvising conflict is always fun because you can just go for it.

  Ed Helms

  Fun, Way, Conflict

  "Ed Helms Talks THE HANGOVER 3, JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME, and THE OFFICE". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. February 7, 2012.

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• If they think they are doing something new, they ought to do what I do every day - spend at least two hours every day listening to Johann Sebastian Bach and, man, it's all there. If they want to improvise around a theme,which is the essence of jazz, they should learn from the master. He never wastes a note, and he knows where every note is going and when to bring it back. Some of these cats go way out and forget where they began or what they started to do. Bach will clear it up for them.

  Coleman Hawkins

  Music, Learning, Cat

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• I think jazz is a beautiful, democratic music. It encourages musicians with very strong, and many times, very different points of view to work together as a team while, at the same time, giving them the space to express their individuality. It's a very important art form and can be used as a model for different cultures to work together.

  Marcus Miller

  Music, Beautiful, Teamwork

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing.

  Christopher Walken

  Wonderful, Knows

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• I think it’s very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you’re in … because when you improvise you’re in right now. You’re not in yesterday or tomorrow—you’re right in the moment. Being in that moment really gives you a perspective of life that you never get at any other time as far as learning about your ego… You have to see your unimportance before you can see your importance and your significance to the world.

  Charlie Haden

  Thinking, Yesterday, Giving

  "'Live In The Present': Charlie Haden Remembered". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. July 18, 2014.

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• My school life was very much a wandering experience. I was having trouble in school and I was not making a lot of friends. So coming home and actually improvising on the piano and just coming up with melodies was an escape for me.

  Josh Groban

  Home, School, Piano

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The main thing about improvising is listening so if something happens that wasn't expected and you know your character, you know what has to happen in this scene, you can react to that in a way that's honest and it might take you in a different direction to go to the same place.

  Vince Vaughn

  Character, Listening, Different

  Source: movieweb.com

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• I don't have a fear factor. Well, not much of one. And I'm willing to risk quite a lot - as a comedian, you're always risking a lot. You're risking failure, especially if you're improvising and going on TV shows trying to make comedy out of thin air. That is quite a risky business.

  David Walliams

  Air, Tv Shows, Risk

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• our domestic lives reflect the major trend that dominates the consumer marketplace today: an ever-increasing emphasis on variety and choice. ... we find ourselves inventing our lives as we go along, improvising in an effort to take advantage of the bewildering range of choices that we face.

  Sally Helgesen

  Choices, Effort, Trends

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• All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that's all people know how to do when they're improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.

  Albert Brooks

  Yelling, People, Comedy

  "Albert Brooks Talks DRIVE, TAXI DRIVER, Improvising, Future Projects, Where’s the DEFENDING YOUR LIFE Blu-ray & Turning Down Roles". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. October 31, 2011.

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• I haven't written a novel or something that long, because I really am improvising all along and the story is growing new limbs to do what it needs to do. So there's very little planning. There's a little planning where I say, "Well, it looks like I'm going in this direction, ok, good." But there's very little forethought or intellectual justification: "Oh, look, I'm putting in a theme park because that represents dystopian America!"

  George Saunders

  America, Long, Intellectual

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• My favorite dish is cleaning out the fridge on Sunday night and improvising a great medley.

  Matthew McConaughey

  Sunday, Night, Cleaning

  Interview with Andy Warhol, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 5, 2014.

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• People have said to me for a long time, "Man you're funny." I say, "Well, I'm quick," but being funny on purpose, take after take - that's why I said for me it was new territory, and so by improvising something might come out that might be good. And it's film, so they can cut it if it isn't.

  Denzel Washington

  Cutting, Men, Long

  Source: collider.com

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• A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.

  Sally Schneider

  Real, Book, Home

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