Improvisational quotes:

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Improvisational things about picture-making... learned from working with the small camera early on have served me well in being able to think quickly when making [portraits]. -- Dawoud Bey
Korean cinema is very improvisational, and there is a unique power that stems from this. -- Bae Doona
When it's a sharing and improvisational meeting, where you're riffing off other people's ideas, that actually can be productive. -- Steven Johnson
My act is sort of improvisational. I have a skeleton in my head, but no fat or skin on it. -- Paula Poundstone
I tend to a lot of improvisational ranting, and that's fun. For me, stand-up has been, performance-wise, a really good outlet. -- Michael Showalter
Part of this new world of completely improvisational terrorism is that there were codes of war that disintegrated in the face of terrorism. -- Diane Sawyer
Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened. -- Archie Shepp
My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument. The guitar is harmonic structure. I'm not a good enough guitarist to improvise on it. -- Paul Simon
It's not so much that I got that idea at some point, it came up naturally because of the improvisational nature of the story I was telling. -- Chester Brown
Jam Cruise is actually a comfortable place for me. My jamming skills and my improvisational skills have improved immensely as I've gone more solo, because I've had this opportunity. -- John Oates
I would like to have a movie under my own control sometime, and see what could be done with it. Who knows? Maybe Hollywood will make an improvisational movie someday. -- Alan Arkin
A certain rough-around-the-edges improvisational looseness - a sense of something coming together before your eyes, or not quite - may be one of the things that distinguishes performance art from theater. -- Roberta Smith
I'm not a particularly good cook. Part of it is that it is the kind of cooking anybody could do if they bothered. It's improvisational. I cook with whatever I have laying around. -- Steve Albini
I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life. -- Amy Tan
If I know a guy who's a really good improvisational actor, I'd be foolish not to let him because he'll come up with goodies and all kinds of little freebies that you get. -- Rob Reiner
I hate it, it is tedious... when I write for my act, it is very improvisational, I write bullet points, I cannot sit in front of a computer; that is not my style. -- Kathy Griffin
I have a reputation for being an improvisational actor, which is true, but I also know what I'm doing so that if the improvisational strand doesn't work I can go back to what I know's already there. -- Robert Carlyle
This is why improvisational music and comedy is so inspiring: You are seeing something being born, and that energy, there is no substitute for. These songs, most of them, are about a minute old when you hear them. -- John Darnielle
Saturday Night Live' was actually started with a show that Lorne Michaels and I did at a summer camp called Timberlane in Ontario when we were 14 and 15. We would do an improvisational show with music, comedy and acting. -- Howard Shore
Since being diagnosed with Asperger's, I'd been working with an acting coach who has now become a good friend. We'd been trying lots of improvisational techniques to help me with some of the problems I experience. But it's a very slow process. -- Paddy Considine
The improvisational nature of jazz musicianship is such that a truly competent performer must be prepared to function as an on-the-spot composer who is expected to contribute to the orchestration in progress, not simply to execute the score as it is written and rehearsed. -- Albert Murray
Ben was more improvisational, and relied less on methodology, and basically is a guitarist who switched to bass, whereas Jeff has a more traditional approach to playing bass in a band, and has a great sense of what his band sounds like, and we lock up nicely. -- Matt Cameron
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I do try to keep my show very improvisational. I don't work off a set list; I like to keep it more in the moment. I like to have information about where I'm going, what might be happening in that particular region as well. I like for people to feel like the show is for them. -- Dane Cook
I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime. -- Stephen Colbert
My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music. -- Meshell Ndegeocello
I've always believed acting is an improvisational art form, even when not a single line is changed. I mean, the behavior should always be improvised. My favorite moments in any performance are when I'm just along for the ride; when I'm surprising myself. I know when I'm done and I think to myself, 'Gee, I didn't see that coming,' I've done well. -- Trevor St. John
Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. -- Archie Shepp
I love the joy in the improvisational creative process. -- Justin Roiland
I've been largely an improvisational actor for most of my career. -- Billy Bob Thornton
I converted a family-owned strip club into an improvisational acting theater. -- Tommy Chong
Ricardo Montalban is to improvisational acting what Mount Rushmore is to animation. -- John Cassavetes
Once I had defined myself as a compositional drummer, I thought, "Well, I want to be an improvisational drummer." -- Neil Peart
With comedy, if you write something for me, I'm better at it. I'm not sure I'm so good at improvisational stuff. -- Robert Knepper
I come from an improvisational background so I'm used to playing. I'm used to not knowing what exactly is going to come out. -- Naomi Grossman
Writing is very improvisational. It's like trying to fix a broken sewing machine with safety pins and rubber bands. A lot of tinkering. -- Margaret Atwood
When you work without a script, you are in a sense working in a much more improvisational way than when you are prepared totally. -- Sydney Pollack
I don't like the stigma that comes with being called a poet . . . So I call what I'm doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue. -- Tom Waits
I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Winters. He's influenced everyone who's ever done improvisational comedy. You look to Jonathan Winters for inspiration. He paved the way. -- Rob Reiner
My entire career has been pivoting from company to company. Some people call it lack of planning or direction, I call it flexibility and good improvisational skills. -- Justin Kan
Playful arising is authorized by both risk and trust in the process and in oneself. To be truly playful and improvisational one must not look for results. -- Joshua L. Goldberg
Preparation is the be-all of good trial work. Everything else - felicity of expression, improvisational brilliance - is a satellite around the sun. Thorough preparation is that sun. -- Louis Nizer
I don't really have one dish. I'm a very improvisational cook. I sort of like to make things up as I go along. I'm quite creative in the kitchen. -- Gugu Mbatha-Raw
I love to improvise, but I always thought "Man, it's like the final frontier for improvisational actors, to really go for something emotional, something that's not just chasing the laugh." -- John C. Reilly
Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things. -- Barry Levinson
In terms of creative engagement, I just love being able to produce, produce, produce. You don't always get it perfect, but it has much more of an improvisational element, and you learn. -- Alex Hirsch
Louis Armstrong was the primary contributor to jazz music in the 20th century. His improvisational skills served as the principal model for all who came after him, regardless of one's chosen instrument. -- Ellis Marsalis, Jr.
The improvisational ability to lead adaptively relies on responding to the present situation rather than importing the past into the present and laying it on the current situation like an imperfect template. -- Ronald A. Heifetz
When comedy is good, it's jazz. The beats of it, the looseness, the improvisational part, the music-the way you hit the inflection, the high notes of a joke. It's all melody to me. -- Billy Crystal
If a director can find the exact combination between the written word as a guideline and improvisational input from his actors, I think that's where you'll find the most successful work being done. -- Alan Thicke
Basketball, unlike football with its prescribed routes, is an improvisational game, similar to jazz. If someone drops a note, someone else must step into the vacuum and drive the beat that sustains the team. -- Phil Jackson
As you get ready to walk out under the bright lights of the improvisational stage of the rest of your life be bold. Don't always worry about what your next line is going to be. -- Dick Costolo

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