Improvisation Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Improvisation

Improvisation Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Improvisation quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

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 shortest feedback loop I can think of is doing improvisation in front of an audience. — Demetri Martin

It's an improvisation on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you don't know how to get there. It's not linear. — Richard Holbrooke

Life is an improvisation. You have no idea what's going to happen next and you are mostly just making things up as you go along. — Stephen Colbert

Life itself was an improvisation in which I was going to have to deal with what came to me and not think about what should have come. — Alan Alda

My whole life has been one big improvisation. — Clint Eastwood

We actually use a lot of improvisation on 'Transparent.' — Amy Landecker

My gigs are built on improvisation: I go out there and I'm like the Energizer bunny. — Meat Loaf

Genius is supposed to be 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.
On the other hand, catering is 99% perspiration and 1% improvisation. — Elizabeth White

With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation. — John Burnside

You had to account for every move, arrival or exit. In the world there was a conspiracy against improvisation. It was only permitted in jazz. — Anais Nin

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

Composition is selective improvisation. — Igor Stravinsky

The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own. — Sonny Rollins

Only he who is well prepared has any opportunity to improvise. — Ingmar Bergman

Creativity is improvisation — Simon Silva

If anybody is a master at improvisation, it would be Ken Jeong. He is hilarious. — Anneliese Van Der Pol

Anything I do, I learn about first. I am not in favour of improvisation; I believe in work and in learning — Ferreira Gullar

You know, when cameras are rolling, improvisation doesn't feel natural. The pressure is too great. You're on a time schedule. You've got 60 crewmen. — Albert Brooks

Composition is frozen improvisation. — Igor Stravinsky

Life is improvisation. — Tina Fey

If you just want to be a writer, I don't care, for pitching, for writing dialogue, you should take an improvisation class. It's super important. — Thomas Lennon

Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

With improvisation, I just do it. It might be a total failure but then you just throw the dice again. — Christian Marclay

To write a book about improvisation is partly a contradiction in terms. Improvisation is spontaneous. It's in the moment. — Sally Schneider

We did very little improvisation on camera, and once in a while we did. — Peter Tork

Most of my comedy writing happens through improvisation on stage; doing it in the moment. — Marc Maron

I like messing up the song, doing some improvisation. And I like running around the room with the mic. — Erika M. Anderson

I think I'm going to venture into the futuristic, semi sci-fi love story land, but still in my style of improvisation. — Drake Doremus

Too much improvisation leaves the mind stupidly void. — Victor Hugo

The only element of jazz that I keep is improvisation. — Jan Garbarek

Improvisation has never been my strong point. — Scarlett Johansson

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

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough. — Flea

Difficult for actors to extemporise in nineteenth-century English. Except for Robert Hardy and Elizabeth Spriggs, who speak that way anyway. — Emma Thompson

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

You can't make a mistake when you improvise. — Patti Smith

I like films that are well-written and concise and with not a lot of room for improvisation. — Patrice Leconte

I don't think I differentiate between composition and improvisation. Improvisation could be a large part of a composition. — Yoshi Wada

It is when we are knocked down that we learn the most about standing up. We stop trying to be perfect. — Amy Lisewski

I love improvisation. — Nora Dunn

Improvisation is terribly haphazard. — Leo Ornstein

I've always been into improvisation. — Tommy Chong

I allow a lot of room for improvisation and funny stuff. I always feel planned. — Michael Bay

The score must govern the music. It must have authority, and not merely be an arbitrary jumping-off point for improvisation. — Cornelius Cardew

There are wonderful things in Jazz, the improvisation, the liveliness, the being at one with the audience. — Henri Matisse

Ever fresh the broad creation,
A divine improvisation,
From the heart of God proceeds,
A single will, a million deeds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation. — W. Somerset Maugham

To create characters, one must build background. And one of the tools we use is improvisation. — Harvey Keitel

When you planned rough, you allowed room for improvisation. — Stephen King

Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies. — John Dewey

People are tired of constant movement, improvisation, and wild scrambling when plans fail. — Francois Hollande

Improvisation is a compositional method. — Evan Parker

To sing a song is like whispering to a child's ear. It is an art heavily relying on improvisation. — Andrea Bocelli

Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, but that's what we face when we're dealing with improvisation. — Jan Garbarek

You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it! — Art Tatum

In comedy, my strengths are improvisation. — Kevin Hart

That, as my cousin Nord would say, is where my improvised lie falls apart. — Eoin Colfer

There is no facet of my professional life that doesn't require or request improvisation. — Marc Evan Jackson

Most of us lead lives of chaotic improvisation from day to day, bawling for peace while plunging grimly into fresh disorders. — Edward Abbey

In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize. — Gore Vidal

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

Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation
experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way — Paul Theroux

Peace demands more, not less, from a people. Peace lacks the clarity of purpose and the cadence of war. War is scripted: peace is improvisation. — Richard M. Nixon

Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity. — Mary Catherine Bateson

All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room. — Martin Short

Improvisation is the courage to move from one note to the next. — Bobby McFerrin

Most of my music is improvisation, and composition is improvisation. Even if I have a score, it is improvisation. — Yoshi Wada

Every night was improv. — Kliph Nesteroff

Improvisation is not a presentational form, except in small doses, or as a game. It's a tool. — Bernard Sahlins

You've got to have fun playing. It bothers me when players don't seem to be enjoying themselves, even when they play an incredible improvisation. — Rufus Reid

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation. — David Antin

I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work. — Vincente Minnelli

Even if the script's well written there's something about the life of an improvisation that resonates better than a written word, sometimes. — John Travolta

As I get older, I'm trying to accept improvisation into my day-to-day living. — Colin Mochrie

Believe it or not, this simple phrase, "Yes! And . . ." is the secret of improv. — Amy Lisewski

Improvisation is the expression of the accumulated yearnings, dreams, and wisdom of the soul. — Yehudi Menuhin

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts. — Ken Burns

As any jazz musician knows, it takes flexibility and adaptability for improvisation to create beauty. — Doc Childre

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music. — Sonny Rollins

I'm very bad with improvisation. I hate it. — Christoph Waltz

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself. — Cecil Taylor

Most of my act is improvisation. I'm inspired for the moment. Standing there in front of 2,000 or 3,000 people you don't know can be pretty inspiring. — Howie Mandel

The unexpected is our normal routine. Commander Riker — Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode Guide Team

As a director and an actor, I encourage improvisation but in character and in the moment of what it is. — Billy Crystal

I think that music, or at least the kind of music that I make, benefits greatly from improvisation. — Ryan Adams

Lying is manipulation. I prefer to call what I did 'improvisation in times of desperation. — Katie Kacvinsky

Improvisation is just writing in front of an audience. — Carl Reiner

When I first did 'Best in Show,' I had never done any improvisation. — Jim Piddock

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas. — Arnold Schoenberg

The music of the Gypsies belongs in the sphere of improvisation rather than in any other, without which it would have no power to exist. — Franz Liszt

Improvisation is too good to leave to chance. — Paul Simon

For me, improvisation is about working with a partner. That is much easier to do in the interview, because you have a sounding board. — Stephen Colbert

She likes the frisson of improvisation. Fun cannot be scheduled. Fun simply occurs. — Rumaan Alam

While other dot-coms merged or perished, Amazon survived through a combination of conviction, improvisation, and luck. — Brad Stone

As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality. — Mose Allison

Composing is improvisation slowed down. — Wayne Shorter