Improvisation quotes:

Send

Improvisation is almost like the retarded cousin in the comedy world. We've been trying forever to get improvisation on TV. It's just like stand-up. It's best when it's just left alone. It doesn't translate always on TV. It's best live. -- Amy Poehler
Improvisation is too good to leave to chance. -- Paul Simon
Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself. -- Cecil Taylor
Improvisation is the expression of the accumulated yearnings, dreams, and wisdom of the soul. -- Yehudi Menuhin
Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls. -- Lars von Trier
I find Indian music very funky. I mean it's very soulful, with their own kind of blues. But it's the only other school on the planet that develops improvisation to the high degree that you find in jazz music. So we have a lot of common ground. -- John McLaughlin
Improvisation is terribly haphazard. -- Leo Ornstein
Improvisation is a compositional method. -- Evan Parker
Improvisation has never been my strong point. -- Scarlett Johansson
Improvisation is just writing in front of an audience. -- Carl Reiner
Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next. -- Bobby McFerrin
[Improvisation ] is been with me all my life. We all do it. -- Pauline Oliveros
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own. -- Sonny Rollins
Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity. -- Mary Catherine Bateson
Improvisation is not a presentational form, except in small doses, or as a game. It's a tool. -- Bernard Sahlins
--
Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call. -- Stephen Nachmanovitch
I don't think I differentiate between composition and improvisation. Improvisation could be a large part of a composition. -- Yoshi Wada
To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment. -- Sally Schneider
Jazz Improvisation means that practice is not as straightforward as it would be when you simply have a score to play. -- Ahmad Jamal
Improvisation, for me, is when the cameras start rolling, we don't know where we're going and let's just waste people's time and money. -- Jason Bateman
Improvisation is empowering because it welcomes the unknown. And since what's impossible is always unknown, it allows me to believe I can cheat the impossible. -- Philippe Petit
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
Improvisation in the jazz sense - like the business sense - is not formless. It is built on a skill set. Jazz, for example, involves selecting a tune. -- John Kao
Improvisation has been with me since I was a kid, and, taking a selfish pleasure from that, I just thought, "What the hell. It might as well be something other people enjoy." -- Jamie Lidell
Improvisation means coming to the situation without rigid expectations or preconceptions. The key to improvisation is motion - you keep going forward, fearful or not, living from moment to moment. That's how life is. -- Bobby McFerrin
Improvisation helps because you get what's on the page and you make it a little more palatable to your tongue. And that's the beauty of creating and being spontaneous. That's the way I love to work. -- Taraji P. Henson
Working within the limits of the medium forces us to change our own limits. Improvisation is not breaking with forms and limitations just to be 'free,' but using them as the very means of transcending ourselves. -- Stephen Nachmanovitch
Improvisation is the art of becoming sound. It is the only art in which a human being can and must become the music he or she is making. Improvisation is the only musical art which predicated entirely on human trust and love. -- Alvin Curran
Improvisation is the essence of good talk. Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out things prepared for us; but let heaven not less defend us from the beautiful spontaneous writer who puts his trust in the inspiration of the moment. -- Max Beerbohm
I used to go to the Improvisation Comedy Club every night in Times Square. How I didn't get killed in that area either means that 1) God is watching over me or 2) I am so insignificant to God that he didn't bother having me killed. -- Gilbert Gottfried
Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion. -- Alan Arkin
Improvisation is a great mystery. You play something, and you play an answer to it. Then you play something to wrap it up. Nothing is going through your mind; you're not thinking of anything. Every now and then you surprise yourself. Where did that come from? -- Jimmy Knepper
Improvisation is a weird word because we often think it means that you make things up out of whole cloth right there on the spot, and that's rarely the case in acting. You have to know who the character is, what the situation is and what is needed. -- Roger Ebert
Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps. -- Mary Catherine Bateson
Composition is selective improvisation. -- Igor Stravinsky
Composing is improvisation slowed down. -- Wayne Shorter
There's always some room for improvisation. -- Satyajit Ray
To work from nature is to improvise. -- Georges Braque
I'm very bad with improvisation. I hate it. -- Christoph Waltz
My whole life has been one big improvisation. -- Clint Eastwood
The minute you make a mistake - that's improvisation! -- Barry Harris
I allow a lot of room for improvisation and funny stuff. I always feel planned. -- Michael Bay
Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation. -- Jan Garbarek
To create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation -- Harvey Keitel
The shortest feedback loop I can think of is doing improvisation in front of an audience. -- Demetri Martin
The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts. -- Ken Burns
The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough. -- Flea
All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room. -- Martin Short
With improvisation, I just do it. It might be a total failure but then you just throw the dice again. -- Christian Marclay
In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds. -- Steve Lacy
It ain't about if he knocks a guy out. It's about how he knocks a guy out. It's the style, the improvisation. -- Don King
There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book. -- Carson McCullers
The thing about improvisation is that it's not about what you say. It's listening to what other people say. It's about what you hear. -- Paul Merton
Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them. -- Wynton Marsalis
What matters most to me? To work with my model until I have it enough in me to be able to improvise, to let my hand run free... -- Henri Matisse
He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet. -- William Golding
Perfect retention. I don't think I could do that-I've never disciplined myself to do it. I suppose a lot of it is a question of discipline. Which improvisation is not. -- George Shearing
With Sleater-Kinney, we did a lot of improvisation in our live shows, and even our process of songwriting involved bringing in disparate parts and putting them together to form something cohesive. -- Carrie Brownstein
Not with the Rochester Philharmonic, but I formed my own orchestra, made up of musicians from the Eastman School, where I'm on the faculty now, direct the Jazz Ensemble and teach improvisation classes. -- Chuck Mangione
Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation. -- Nicolas Cage
What all my years in improvisation taught is that - if you're going to grow as a performer - you have to try some new things. You've got to be willing to take a few risks. -- Jack McBrayer
But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience. -- Romare Bearden
I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom. -- Anthony Hopkins
But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things. -- Alan Arkin
I love improvisation. You can't blame it on the writers. You can't blame it on direction. You can't blame it on the camera guy... It's you. You're on. You've got to do it, and you either sink or swim with what you've got. -- Jonathan Winters
When I sit down to write a song, it's a kind of improvisation, but I formalize it a bit to get it into the studio, and when I step up to a microphone, I have a vague idea of what I'm about to do. -- Paul McCartney
The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese. -- Frank Zappa
Jazz is all about improvisation and it's about the moment in time, doing it this way now, and you'll never do it this way twice. I've studied the masters. Why would I want to play ball after the guys who sit on a bench? I want to play like Michael Jordan. -- Brian McKnight
The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody. -- Wynton Marsalis
All actors have to make the words fit in their mouths, and make the words the words fit to how you say it and how you make it life-like and make it look like what you're saying is just conversation that you're just thinking off the top of your head. That process is not quite improvisation. -- Bruce Willis
Improvisation, it is a mystery. You can write a book about it, but by the end no one still knows what it is. When I improvise and I'm in good form, I'm like somebody half sleeping. I even forget there are people in front of me. Great improvisers are like priests; they are thinking only of their god. -- Stephane Grappelli
One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits melding. And yet, big band jazz has a real military side to it. -- Damien Chazelle
Dancers work and they work and they work, and they master their skills so far that improvisation just comes flowing out of them. Their natural expression of the best they can possibly be comes out of them because there is no boundary to hold them back... That's the mentality that I'm trying to create, recreate and hold on to forever. -- Pete Carroll
I was about 14 when I started with a theater group; it was like a stage group on the weekends alongside school. And it was run by a group of guys who'd been to drama school themselves in London. So they introduced us to techniques that they'd learn about, and they kind of informed us about improvisation and screenwriting and all of that stuff. -- Imogen Poots
I love improvisation. -- Nora Dunn
Life is improvisation. -- Tina Fey
Composition is frozen improvisation. -- Igor Stravinsky
I've always been into improvisation. -- Tommy Chong
In improvisation, there are no mistakes. -- Miles Davis
In comedy, my strengths are improvisation. -- Kevin Hart
I love improvisation. It's quite exciting. -- Tcheky Karyo
You don't want to OD on improvisation. -- Patti Smith
Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void. -- Victor Hugo
There's always a certain amount of camera improvisation. -- Allan Dwan
The idea of improvisation kind of freaked me out. -- Lily Collins
The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation. -- Jan Garbarek
A strict form such as mine cannot be achieved through improvisation. -- Michael Haneke
You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it! -- Art Tatum
I'm really keen to try things. I love improvisation. It's quite exciting. -- Tcheky Karyo
As I get older, I'm trying to accept improvisation into my day-to-day living. -- Colin Mochrie
Everything we design and make is an improvisation, a lash-up, something inept and provisional. -- David Pye
Stay fluid and roll with those changes. Life is just a big extended improvisation. -- Jane Lynch
I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. -- Ivan Reitman
If you go back to the roots of jazz, it was all about COLLECTIVE improvisation. -- Henry Threadgill
If anybody is a master at improvisation, it would be Ken Jeong. He is hilarious. -- Anneliese van der Pol
As any jazz musician knows, it takes flexibility and adaptability for improvisation to create beauty. -- Doc Childre
I loved the idea [of improvisation], but I'd never taken any classes or practiced it. -- Lily Collins
The improvisation had to be in public, because you only get value playing to strangers. -- Keith Johnstone
Most of my comedy writing happens through improvisation on stage; doing it in the moment. -- Marc Maron
Most of my show is just improvisation. It goes with the energy of the crowd. -- Freddie Gibbs
There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation. -- David Antin
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation. -- W. Somerset Maugham
My gigs are built on improvisation: I go out there and I'm like the Energizer bunny. -- Meat Loaf
There is really not that much improvisation in my films. There is an acceptance of a chance. -- Michael Snow
I like films that are well-written and concise and with not a lot of room for improvisation. -- Patrice Leconte
There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience. -- Henri Matisse
I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation. -- Ryan Adams
As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality. -- Mose Allison
I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work. -- Vincente Minnelli
Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way -- Paul Theroux
Cynics who say power is all that counts in politics forget that power without ideas is just improvisation. -- Michael Ignatieff
Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas. -- Arnold Schoenberg
Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation. -- Robert Green Ingersoll
Most of my music is improvisation, and composition is improvisation. Even if I have a score, it is improvisation. -- Yoshi Wada
I like messing up the song, doing some improvisation. And I like running around the room with the mic. -- Erika M. Anderson
To sing a song is like whispering to a child's ear. It is an art heavily relying on improvisation. -- Andrea Bocelli
Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies. -- John Dewey
By definition, acting is improvisation, even if you follow the lines. You invent what you do, when you do it. -- Isabelle Huppert
In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize. -- Gore Vidal

Send