Top 80 Improvise Quotes

In the States, this type of jam-band phenomena has opened it up for groups to improvise, admittedly more in the groove area, as opposed to the straight-ahead jazz thing – which is good for me, as that’s one part of where I’m at. It’s been so great playing these gigs and seeing kids come out and the whole college scene.

I love improv so much. Listening. I think that’s the key. When you improvise, you put a lot of pressure on yourself to create, and to be generating information, and trying to be funny, but if you just listen to what’s being said to you, and then react honestly, you generally get better results.

I’m very open and never write what I’m going to say. Speeches bore everybody else. I have to freestyle. Every time, from one program to another, everything changes and I improvise.

I spent a lot of time in Chicago at a place called The Annoyance Theater, where we would develop one-act plays through improv, and you would just improvise scenes and then discover something about the character and use it in the next scene.

After you’ve practiced for an hour or so, turn down the lights and record yourself playing. Improvise and go nuts, then playback what you’ve recorded and listen for your strengths and weaknesses.

Confident people, who understand comedy, improvise so much better than people who are scared. You can’t be scared to improvise. You have to know your character, and then you have to let go.

The big difference is the size of the crew and the flexibility of shooting because of the size. I mean, it’s crazy. So you can’t improvise, you cannot suddenly do something that comes to mind, whereas in a small production you have much more flexibility.

A good writer takes time to go in-depth into a subject and then comes out with a good script. Then it’s the job of the actor and director to improvise with it and make it even better.

I never improvise. I create the character and transform into it.

When I feel like improvising, I always improvise on the guitar, never on the lute. It’s as natural to me as breathing.

I went to theater school, and if I spent time with one school of thought in this whole acting game, it’s the Meisner approach of improvise-based acting. This does not mean that you improvise your acting, but that you focus on the other person.

So, for instance, if you came to me, I’d ask, ‘Do you want to write? Do you want to improvise? Why do you want to play this instrument? What do you want to do?’

If you give me a bass guitar and you ask me to improvise something, or even be with some musicians and follow them, I wouldn’t be able to do it. And I want to change that.

It comes down to the difference between what you were planning to do and what life throws at you and you have to end up doing. The one who knows how to improvise is the one who comes out ahead.

I would love to do more acting; I really would love to do it, particularly character acting. I’m a character type of actor; I love situations where I’ve got a bit of room to improvise on the character.

But I really like hosting, I think it’s a strength of mine. It allows me to improvise, and I love the spontaneity of that, and I think I’m funny behind the desk when interviewing someone.

With Altman, he does discuss everything with you, but then leaves you to it and gives you full rein and lets you improvise and create a character while the camera is rolling.

Many times I’ll improvise it, which isn’t done a lot in movies or commercials. But a lot of my commercials are improvised.

I improvise a lot and try something new every couple of years.

I have a great ability to improvise verbally, and I am very funny on a dime.

It was pretty radical to go from the Eagles to being the only melodic instrument. You have to play a certain way. It’s like the Who. It was a great kick in the pants for me to get my chops up and to improvise a little more.

My father was Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones and then went on to improvise some successful Yiddish parodies, some of which I perform. My favorite was ‘Geshray of the Vilde Kotchke,’ his version of ‘Cry of the Wild Goose.’

A rational model of software is to design it quickly – the economic pressure to improvise presents an interesting challenge.

Many people do think it’s naive to improvise in front of paying customers. I’m not saying one way is better than another.

But I also think that the more you reason collectively about what the project should be at the beginning of the process, the more you can improvise later.

If you have a great script and great dialogue, you don’t need to improvise.

Most things I get hired on, I get hired because I improvise something funny, or they just think I look weird.

I knew if I wanted to improvise over chord changes, I’d have to figure out all the scales that went with all those chords.

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.

Sometimes we had to improvise. I hate to improvise because I felt like I couldn’t find words.

It’s fascinating working with young children. You have to improvise around them, and they’re moving around and doing stuff, and you have to be real with them.

For Kitty Gilbert in ‘Topsy-Turvy,’ I had to get to the point where I could improvise in the style of 1880, which is difficult. The research for that was huge.

I’ve always done theater. I’ve never thought of myself as a comedic actress in any way. ‘Anchorman’ kind of cracked that open. When I got a small part in ‘Anchorman,’ I didn’t know it was possible on camera to improvise. So I was like, ‘What’s happening?’

When you improvise alone, you don’t risk a lot, but doing an improvisation when you are two is even more difficult because you need to listen exactly to understand what is going to happen.

The music is something outside myself that’s also inside myself… Music and a sense of another presence always went hand in hand. Even when I was three, I would improvise music, and my maternal grandfather would act as an audience and used to applaud. I would imitate things like thunder and rain.

With ‘The Soup,’ obviously it has to be totally scripted out, and then, within that, I improvise punchlines and sometimes setups if I can’t read the teleprompter properly.

It scared me to death to think about improv, but I got hired for a year at Second City in Chicago, which made me nervous, but I found I could improvise. Then I was in a group called the Ace Trucking Company, which we’d do, like, a half hour set of material, then open up for improvisation.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

I always just like to improvise, and that goes for my audition tapes as well.

If I’m doing comedy, I try to improvise a lot. Even if they don’t use it, it helps me loosen up and figure out the character.

My favorite lineup is just a trio, because then every night you can improvise and change the repertoire. Keyboards and brass can be great, but it puts you in a different ballgame because you’re not quite as free. You have to stick to the arrangement of the song.

My family is full of musicians, and a couple of times a year we get together and jam at my cousin’s studio. We improvise and have a great time.

I have never been to an acting school, and on the sets of ‘Karwaan,’ Irrfan was my acting school. By observing him, I learnt to improvise in the scenes along with focusing on the smallest of the details.

Without a band, I’m much more free to improvise.

When you improvise, you work off the laughs from the audience, but when you step on stage to do standup, it’s silent.

Mitch Miller knew exactly what he wanted me to sing. He didn’t want me to improvise at all.

That’s the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn’t make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz.

I love art so much because of curiosity. At the start of a painting, I know 10 percent of what the painting will be, and then I have to improvise the whole thing.

I think by now if people hire me, they know I’m going to improvise. I’m an improviser by trade.

We want to connect all these musical worlds together. We just improvise; we know straight away if its going to work or not. They’re not covers – I hate the word cover. We do a transcription: mix it up, put our own spin on it. I think people will be surprised how powerful our show is.

I give everything far too much thought. If you think you know what you’re doing, then you can kind of relax, and then you can improvise and play and just enjoy the day rather than be chasing the lines.

No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

I’ve found that as I’ve learned to improvise melodically, it seems like I can come up with a bigger variety of stuff. I kind of selfishly enjoy it more, because I’m in the moment so much.

In Malayalam, I can improvise, and acting is easy because I think in Malayalam, but for ‘Velaikkaran,’ I had to prepare for a role, which is a first for me.

When I was young, I took classical ballet lessons, but I wasn’t very good at it. It was really frustrating because I wanted to be good at it. When I stopped having lessons, I began to dance and improvise, and I felt more comfortable.