The things that have always been important: to be a good man to try to live my life the way God would have me to turn it over to Him that His will might be worked in my life to do my work without looking back to give it all I've got and to take pride in my work as an honest performer.

I'm so thankful for the Internet because actors and singers and performers now have a way to connect with their fans on a very personal level which I think is quite special.

For the past few years I was the more visible Asian performer and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.

I don't remember ever deciding to become a performer. I just always was. I began performing by mimicking the performers on the new television that first took the attention away from me as the baby of the household. I continued performing to put a smile on my grandmother's face and always considered her when accepting or declining roles.

Some have called we rock and roll performers who never retire 'troubadours.' I enjoy this misnomer immensely. While there are many differences between me and my distant predecessors in L'Occitane I do believe there is a lineage that connects us of the last 70 years with those romantic singers of the High Middle Ages.

The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you've got the respect of white and colored you can ease a lot of things.

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no like 'I'll be the rock star you be the adulating fan.'

Music never dies. Do we really need another Madonna tour? Does she have to compete with women performers 25 years her junior?

Pop songs are not as graceful as they used to be. Performers today haven't gone through the regimen of learning how to write. And of course everyone wants to own copyrights.

For me 'Rent' was all about coming out of myself finding out who I was learning the power I could have as a performer.

Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge for it requires from its disciples composers and performers alike not only talent and enthusiasm but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.

I want to be safe in the knowledge that I can tour and play festivals for a long time. The main thing is that I want a good reputation as a live performer. If I have that I'd be so happy.

When I went on to write my next book Working With Emotional Intelligence I wanted to make a business case that the best performers were those people strong in these skills.

Regardless of who originally made it popular any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation. I see myself as a performer and that applies to a Greek drama or a modern comedy.

Performers are so vulnerable. They're frightened of humiliation sure their work will be crap. I try to make an environment where it's warm where it's OK to fail - a kind of home I suppose.

Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.

If it's total freedom I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play.

I guess some people want to be performers because they want to be famous.

I was a shy kid but somehow I knew I would make it as a performer. I'd always be telling my mum that I was going to be a famous singer. In my school yearbooks I would write 'Remember me when I'm famous.' I knew I had a gift.

I discovered early on that some performers live their life in order to act so all their relationships are simply an experience that they can feed back into their work. Which I find vampiric.

My dad is a Jack Nicholson lookalike and a frustrated performer my mother's into reading and poetry. I suppose the thing I owe them most is my confidence.

All the best performers bring to their role something more something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists.

Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet as well as one of the wealthiest but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah fashion merchandising adoption melodramas the gym and ill-starred horseback riding to study art.