Quotes about Performance

I like these streets... I always feel as though it's a performance being staged for me; as though the second I've passed they'll all stop leaping and laughing and, instead grow very sad, remembering how poor they are, and retreat with bowed heads into their houses. You often get that effect abroad

I'm not really much of an actor, so when I started on 'The Daily Show', I was just trying to adopt the faux authority of a newsperson.

When you think about a festival from a comedian's perspective, it has to do with who else does it - that's number one. The second consideration - and this is kind of crazy - is: 'What's the food like? What is the town like? Is it walkable? Is it easy to get around?'

When I'm out there playing basketball, it's just, 'Let me do me,' and everybody is going to benefit. I feel confident that whoever I'm out there with is going to win.

I walk into a scene, and I do the scene. That's my job. I don't have an objective. I have the words, and I have whoever I'm playing with.

Michael Strahan should get the amount of money that anybody else in the league is getting. I don't care if it is a quarterback, wide receiver, defensive lineman, linebacker. He should make the kind of money Brett Favre, Marshall Faulk make, because he's that type of player.

The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said, 'A civilization is judged only in its decline.' That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.

I just go out and play my best tennis.

If you start to hesitate with your game, if you start to not go completely with your plan, then it's tough to play your best tennis.

Stand-up comedy seems like a terrifying thing. Objectively. Before anyone has done it, it seems like one of the most frightening things you could conceive, and there's just no shortcut - you just have to do it.

The world is a bell curve. Classroom test scores, employee performance in a company or how many people really, really like you. No matter the population you're studying, they always fit neatly across the standard deviations of the famous bell curve.

Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.