I feel like I've paid a really heavy cost, a really heavy physical health cost, for the years of touring and how physical I've been onstage.
What I learned is that acting is to a large extent about trying to stave off self-doubt long enough to be natural and real onstage.
I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.
I don't know if I change my act from century to century. Sometimes I'm onstage doing imitations and references to people who have been dead for 50 years.
That's one of the great things about comedy: we can - and should - say the things that other people aren't supposed to say. If we didn't do that, if we didn't push against those limits, we'd just be standing around onstage and yelling.
I hope I'm Jessica Tandy, you know. I hope I'm onstage, and I fall over at 85 or something with everyone applauding thinking that it was a joke, you know, 'There she goes again,' and I'm just gone. I've gone to Heaven.
I was standing onstage last year, and I felt like I wanted to be somewhere else. No matter how many people were out there, it all just felt like a blank sheet of paper.
I'm always trying out new stuff onstage. That's where I do all my writing.
I developed in my head that I'm never any better than my last concert or the last time I played, so it's like an audition each time. You get nervous just before going onstage. I still have that, but I think it's more like concern. You're concerned about the people - like meeting your in-laws for the first time.
Being an emcee onstage is mostly about crowd control, about monitoring energy levels.
We have such an energetic live show. We have so much fun onstage. We swap instruments. We might possibly be the sweatiest band in the business.
I really prefer the actual experience of being onstage and living the character from beginning to end with the energy of the audience. There's nothing that beats that feeling, and yet I really have trouble with the eight shows a week.
If I feel like I've done a great job during an interview with the president of the United States live in the Oval Office, it doesn't give me a tenth of the good feeling of going to the school play and making eye contact with my kids as they're onstage delivering their lines. Nothing compares with that moment of connection.
I have a wonderful psychiatrist that I see maybe once a year, because I don't need it. It all comes out onstage.
Jay-Z called me onstage during my song that I produced for 'Watch the Throne?' That was surreal, man. One of those situations I'll never forget. I'll be able to show my kids the footage of when Jay-Z brought me onstage.
From day one, we always admired male R&B groups. They would go onstage with no shirt on and baggy jeans, and girls would scream.
I'm always onstage, and everyone there already loves me, so I go with this certain confidence.
I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.
In 1996, Trump had crashed a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a charity opening a nursery school for children with AIDS. Trump, who had never donated to the charity, stole a seat onstage that had been saved for a big contributor.
Queen Latifah used to help me out with my kids, because while we were all out on tour - Public Enemy, Naughty By Nature, Queen Latifah, Heavy D - when Public Enemy went onstage, I didn't have anybody solid to watch my kids. So, Latifah would help me out.
I always say, 'Hip-hop takes me everywhere.' It's crazy when I step onstage, and people might not speak much English, but they know every word to your songs. It's kind of freaky, but it's really cool.
I was at the radio station all the time and on the air all the time. I met John Travolta and a lot of the other big '70s icons. Shaun Cassidy sang 'Da Do Ron Ron' to me onstage. I thought I was a rock star; I had an all-access-pass childhood.
I like being out onstage in front of everybody, getting that energy and giving that energy. Hopefully I am making them forget about all their problems in the world. For however many hours they are at our show, hopefully they are going to have a great time, and it makes life a little more bearable for everybody involved.
I love theatrics and have a huge imagination: Why would I want to sit onstage and sing a bunch of ballads back-to-back?
When I'm onstage, I'm not thinking about ideas. I'm not in my head at all. It's a more physical experience.
I was in 'Seussical,' and I was in a cage onstage in a purple yarn suit singing backup, and I was like: 'I've had it. I can't do this anymore.' I will say for the record that I did love the show, but I was like: 'I want to do something else. I need a little more.'
If you get lazy when you're onstage, it shows.
I'm not someone who comes onstage and says, 'I'm rewriting this now.' I don't think it's fair to the writers or the director, or the other actors.