It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

How you go about testing is just very different to just being in the situation of qualifying, having to go out, having to nail the lap.

My role 14 years ago in Richard III – that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it – they have all the fun!

As a matter of fact, I didn’t make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years.

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

There will be days when I walk in an arena and people will cheer and then there might be days when I walk in an arena and people might boo, but it all sounds the same to me because it’s all just noise that lets me know that I’m relevant.

And I try to give the best bang for the buck. I love performing more than anything else.

I write all my sermons.

Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.

I don’t think the money people in Hollywood have ever thought I was normal, but I am dedicated to my work and that’s what counts.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

The bat is not a toy, it’s a weapon. It gives me everything in life, which helps me to do everything on the field.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

How can a president not be an actor?

For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.

A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

Too much TV hurts movies.

I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.

I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

We were on for six years. We were in syndication for a while. It had its run. I still see the people from ‚Mr. Belvedere,‘ too. We stay in touch.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

How do people relate to movies now, when they’re on portable devices or streaming them? It’s not as much about going to the movies. That experience has changed.

I am confident that when the facts and policies have been examined, when the record of performances have been reviewed, Barack Obama and Joe Biden will once again be elected to lead our beloved country to a better future.

Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

Computers double their performance every month.

At the major studios, you see people wanting to remake a TV series, wanting to make a sequel.

Bad performances can happen and are not that serious – even with new players. You can’t, say, sell him, get a new one.

I want to – more than anything – to create a moment that people will never forget. Not for me, but for themselves. That’s what I remember about great Super Bowl performances in the past, when you really get lost in the moment with your family.

I heard that when Christina Aguilera went back to her prom, people, like, booed her. I can’t imagine going through that. If you know that’s going to happen, why put yourself in that situation? I’d rather play for 20,000 screaming people, you know?

It’s no secret that we were sticking just about every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.

If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It’s really only to be heard when everyone’s out enjoying it.

The dominant theory coming out of Hollywood is that peoples‘ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and they need more stimulation.

A film is sort of binary – it either works or it doesn’t work. It has nothing to do with how good a job you do. If you bring it up to an adequate level where the audience goes with the movie, then it works, that is all.

When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‚Oh, it must be so hard.‘ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

My whole life is a theater piece.

In case you’re wondering whether I lip synch, the answer is no… people think so because I sound so good.

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

I know that a large part of my fan base is gay. They’ve shown me love from the start. I mean in this industry, everyone from my glam people to my dancers are gay. You can’t be homophobic in this line of work – I’m a pop star!

Wherever I go meeting the public… spreading a message of human values, spreading a message of harmony, is the most important thing.

If I want to be called ‚The Rock,‘ I’ll be called ‚The Rock.‘ If I want to go back to wrestling, I’ll go back to wrestling.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

If I’d married someone in show business, there’d be too much competition.

I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me. Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.

Take advantage of every opportunity to practice your communication skills so that when important occasions arise, you will have the gift, the style, the sharpness, the clarity, and the emotions to affect other people.

A lot of people ask me when I do a stunt, ‚Jackie, are you scared?‘ Of course I’m scared. I’m not Superman.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

Every time I get in the McLaren I feel more comfortable, my confidence increases and I feel more at home with the team.

How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.

You just wait. I’m going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

The beauty of me being on stage is I have a voice.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument – learning to do your craft – that’s the most important thing! It’s not about what goes on in a computer!

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.