When you walk out onstage in front of 65,000 people, it can bring you to tears.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

There are some who speak well and write badly. For the place and the audience warm them, and draw from their minds more than they think of without that warmth.

There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.

I love it when people say things to me in public and want to meet me, because I want to meet them! Early on, my manager told me, ‚If you want to sell 500,000 records, then go out there and meet 500,000 people.‘

Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak, and everything else is huge, complex, and overwhelming.

So when I speak in front of thousands, tens of thousands of people, I don’t really get nervous because I know what I want to say and I know what message I want to give.

Plot exposition that can be gently wound out by the authorial voice and internal monologue of a character in the length of a page has to be delivered in a matter of seconds on the stage.

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

People from North India are generally known to be aggressive and emotional.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

When Caroline Kennedy managed to say ‚you know‘ more than 200 times in an interview with the New York ‚Daily News,‘ and on 130 occasions while talking to ‚The New York Times‘ during her uninspired attempt to become a hereditary senator, she proved, among other things, that she was (a) middle-aged and (b) middle class.

Very rarely do I talk off the top of my head on stage. I’m not an improv guy. I’m a writer-guy who presents what he’s written.

I laugh all the time – at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don’t laugh onstage because then it’s serious business.

I go onstage and I talk, and I remember what I’m saying, and I track it.

I stand here before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

There have been times that I’ve wept as I’ve gone from city to city and I’ve seen how far people have wandered from God.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

When I listen to ‚Nevermind,‘ I hate the production, but there’s something about it that almost makes me cry at times.

I write all of my own speeches.

I’m much more comfortable and confident running out on the field in front of 70,000 people instead of standing in front of a camera trying to say some lines. The people who do that as a profession are very talented because it’s certainly not easy.

I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written… Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn’t have much of a social life going on.

You’ll never have any trouble with Mr. T, I’m just a big, calm teddy bear kind of guy. Mr. T ain’t ashamed to cry. When I go out and I meet people who are suffering and they come and talk to me, Mr. T cries, Mr. T who could break a man’s jaw with his fist.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

It’s really fun to be on stage in front of people.

I realised a little bit to my astonishment that I can give a lecture for a thousand people, and there will be this tumultuous applause, so, you know, I have the feeling well, it can’t be all that bad.

I’m always amazed by the people who work on stage who sing night after night, day after day, week in week out.

I have been – I have spoken in Bir Zeit a number of times.

They’ve got this crazy actor who’s 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they’re probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting.

I’ve had the honor of speaking at many commencements.

A person standing in front of an audience without enthusiasm for his subject and his actions is disconnected from his spirit.

I’ve spent too much time giving speeches, traveling the world.

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

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Armed attack has a definition in international law. It means sudden, overwhelming, instantaneous ongoing attack.

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them.

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.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

When I was younger and did a stand-up gig, it would take me two weeks to recover. Sometimes I’d get so panicked that I would stutter.

Sometimes I feel like being an intellectual. Sometimes I like to just be aggressive and all the way in my feelings. Sometimes I might be emotional, or sometimes I might drag on the track and be lazy. I just like to share the different states of existence of Kevin Gates with the rest of the world.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

How can a president not be an actor?

I get a little bit emotional during a game!

I’m mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it’s the only place where I’m happy.

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity.