performers QUOTES

1 " I’ve never liked the term ‘actor’.” Barron spoke slowly, joining hands with the cast members to his left and right. The rest of them formed a circle, also holding hands, and he continued. “Seriously now, is anyone here ‘acting’? Is anyone here pretending? “Me, I’m a theater director. One hundred percent, all the time. I’m not pretending, or acting, or trying to fool anyone. This is what I do, and I give it my all—just like you. I look around me, and I don’t see a single phony. I see people who give their hearts, their minds, and their very lives to being serious performers on the stage. In the last weeks I’ve watched every one of you give up the easy life to come here and bust a gut to make this show a reality. “That’s why I call you performers. Not actors—performers. Because when it’s time to prepare, you work out every nuance of a role. When it’s time to step in front of the crowd, you reach out and pull them in with both hands. When it’s time to say your lines, you deliver them with skill and meaning. That’s performance. And there’s nothing phony about that. There’s nothing pretend about that. There’s no acting that will take the place of that. “And so that’s my wish for you tonight: Have a great performance. You’ve done the work, you’re ready, and now it’s time to show off. Have fun out there, gang. Perform.” --Jerome Barron's opening night pep talk to the cast of Death Troupe "

2 " A demigod who reaches his apotheosis never mourns for himself.

It is the business of his many adulators to mourn for him. He cannot feel sadness to be so great, leaving all the rest of us to champion in trembling misery.

I, surprisingly, have very few words to offer, only because this year has taken so many sensational performers from us. There comes a time when the agony of loss is too great, when we feel it too much-- there is nothing left but painful astonishment. My grievances lie more with the Gods for taking him away from us than they do with his parting. I suppose I shall reach the stage of unconscionable sorrow at some point; now I am half confusion and half indignation. It should be impossible for people to be so deeply affected by someone whom we have never formally met, but this is existence: it is a bold measure we take, this stake in sufferance; we must all go through everything together, another proof of the mask of division. We all feel the same things, and Prince's passing is felt no less by anybody. Between him and Bowie, there is now a musical chasm in the world, a place where Gods once dwelt that is now abandoned, and in the Age of Pseudolotry, where what is nonsensical reigns over what is intelligent, we are likely never to see one of his kind again.

Goodnight, sweet Prince. We shall go on trundling through this 'thing called life' with hearts defrauded of our greatest love.

--On the death of Prince "

― Michelle Franklin

3 " Your assets are your employees. Invest more on those performing well. Let the non performers go. "

― Manoj Arora , From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom

4 " The world needs peak performers like you to set the example of how to accept failures, dust off, and move on with your head held high. Whether you face a business failure, a divorce, a missed opportunity, a lost sale, a fumbled business presentation, or all of the above, own it, learn from it, and envision a successful future. "

5 " Destiny, I feel is also a relationship-a play between grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over, half of it is absolutely in your hands and your actions will show measurable consequences. Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he entirely the captain of his own destiny; he’s a little of both. We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses-one foot is on the horse called “fate” the other on the horse called “free will”. And the question you have to ask everyday is, Which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it’s not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort? "

― Elizabeth Gilbert

6 " It is possible to become world-class, enter the top 5% of performers in the world, in almost any subject within 6-12 months, or even 6-12 weeks. "

― Timothy Ferriss , The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life

7 " We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called " fate," the other on the horse called " free will." And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort? "

8 " Possible explanations for talented language learning fall into two general areas. One view says: What matters is a person's sense of mission and dedication to language learning. You don't need to describe high performers as biologically exceptional, because what they do is a product of practice. Anyone can become a foreign-language expert - even an adult. (...) The other view says: Something neurological is going on. We may not know exactly what the mechanisms are, but we can't explain exceptional outcomes fully through training or motivation. "

― Michael Erard , Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners

9 " The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a dance of exquisite fidelity, orchestrated with breathtaking precision. Vastly more elaborate than the most complicated ballet, the dance of life encompasses countless molecular performers in synergetic coordination. Yet this is a dance with no sign of a choreographer. No intelligent supervisor, no mystic force, no conscious controlling agency swings the molecules into place at the right time, chooses the appropriate players, closes the links, uncouples the partners, moves them on. The dance of life is spontaneous, self-sustaining, and self-creating. "

― Paul C.W. Davies , The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life

10 " High performers whom exhibit tremendous self-control tend to be burden by their own competence. Studies indicate that being extraordinary competent can place a person under an unusual amount of stress because it raises other people’s expectation of them. The more task that an exemplary employee produces with a ‘go-getting personality’ while maintaining high quality relationships with peers and clients, the more an organization tends to underestimates their actual effort and the more it expects of them. Other people do not comprehend how difficult it is for a high performer to complete multifaceted tasks. They also tend to underestimate how much effort an enterprising person exerts who maintains a positive and pleasant attitude while completing difficult assignments. "

― , Dead Toad Scrolls

11 " Even we set aside the nearly 50 percent of all beginner teachers who choose to leave the profession within five years—and ignore the evidence that those who leave are worse performers than those who stay—it is unclear whether teachers are formally terminated for poor performance any less frequently than are other workers. "

12 " SIMPSONS BLUFFER'S RULE #2
The competent bluffer should always refer to the performers who play The Simpsons as 'the voice talent' never 'actors'.
For extra effect, drop their first names... This implies some tacit familiarity and your bluffee will simply melt before your eyes like the witch in The Wizard of Oz "

― , The Bluffer's Guide to The Simpsons

13 " The worst thing about getting older is you discover that most of the performers in the shows you used to watch are now younger than you. Suddenly, everything become less believable. "

― Neil A. Hogan

14 " The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, " Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher. "

15 " Where does that door lead to?” Day pointed at a door which opened out onto the dark alley.

“I looked it up. It appears to be a small film studio,” the other officer finally stopped staring at God long enough to add to the conversation. “Porn films.”

Day looked up in amusement. “Shut the fuck up.”

The two cops nodded. “That’s what we pulled up in the system. We went around to the front. It’s locked and no one’s inside. We called the number registered to the address, but got no answer.”

“Who’s the owner of the company?” God asked.

The officer flipped a couple pages on his notebook. “Illustra is owned by Johnathan Mack. We also have a list of all the performers and staff.”

Day looked at God. “I bet that little vixen we just apprehended has a recurring role here. Wonder what made her so mad that she wanted to kill someone as soon as she finished fucking.”

“Maybe she didn’t get to come.” Ronowski chuckled, joined by several of the team members.

Syn grimaced.

“Yeah, that might make you homicidal alright,” Day added. “But I wouldn’t know.”

“Day, shut the fuck up,” God barked at his lover's usual inappropriateness. It seemed Day had never met a boundary he didn't stomp right over. "

― A.E. Via

16 " Most people don’t understand performers are really sheltered and protected so much sometimes that they don’t get a chance to live their lives. "

― Diana Ross

17 " individuals are concerned not
with the moral issue of realizing these standards, but with
the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that
these standards are being realized. Our activity, then, is
largely concerned with moral matters, but as performers we
do not have a moral concern in these moral matters. As
performers we are merchants of morality. Our day is given
over to intimate contact with the goods we display and our
minds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but it
may well be that the more attention we give to these goods,
th e more d is ta n t we feel from them and from those who are
believing enough to buy them. To use a different imagery,
the very obligation and profitablility of appearing always in
a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces
us to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of
the stage. "

― Erving Goffman

18 " As touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists.... "

― Tom Rachman , The Imperfectionists

19 " The young people I know judge leaders by their deeds and abhor hypocrisy. Inconsistency and point-scoring do not win respect. It's not easy to be engaged in political debate when it is reduced to performers trying to outdo each other. Actions from leaders must mirror the values they claim to espouse. "

20 " Great performers - in sports, the arts, business, or whatever field - have undertaken massive amounts of training. And when that training is complete... they train some more, and harder than they expect to perform. Why? Training builds confidence and ensures peak performance. "

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