Quotes about audience
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“The secret of the demagogue is to appear as dumb as his audience so that these people can believe themselves as smart as he.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Variant translation: The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he.
Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Secret, Appearance, People

“The audience I play to really is the bright 14-year-old: someone who is capable of sitting still and listening and watching and feeling for even three hours. I know, as I did at that age, they'll potentially have their lives changed.”

Ian McKellen (1939) British actor

Ian McKellen Tours with Royal Shakespeare, 2007 https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/ian-mckellen-tours-royal-shakespeare-25640/,

Feeling, Age, Change

“If a script ‘beeps’ to me, I do it...Audiences may hate these plays, but I believe in them. The only way I can explain my ‘beeps’ is that I’m no intellectual, but my instincts tell me automatically when a playwright has something.”

Ellen Stewart (1919–2011) American theater director and producer

Quoted in "Ellen Stewart, Off Off Broadway Pioneer, Dies at 91" by Mel Gussow and Bruce Weber, The New York Times, (January 13, 2011) https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/theater/14stewart.html.

Way, Hate

“…Sometimes I’ll do these things for a couple of days then suddenly one day the poem comes out, just like that, in a couple of minutes. I might rewrite it later, a kind of fine tuning, or sometimes I’ll tell the audience it’s a new poem and just perform it to see if it works.”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

On his writing process in “Interview with Benjamin Zephaniah” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/37/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-benjamin-zephaniah in Writers & Artists

“Whenever I go and give a talk on Hinduism, and when I say something nice about it, invariably someone from the audience will object: 'I think Hinduism is a disgusting religion because of the caste system.'”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

Source: Quoted from Elst, K. The use of Dalits and racism in anti-Hindu propaganda https://web.archive.org/web/20190310132553/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/chr/christiandalit.html

Thinking, Religion

“There are some directors who actually fear the possible success of music. They fear that the audience or the critics will think the film has worked because there was a very good music score.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor

Music, Fear, Thinking, Success

“God just put a love for it inside of me, I love telling stories, drawing and painting. Animation is a fairly solitary art form. But what happens when you sit in a theater with an audience and you hear their audible responses to your work—the crying, the laughter—there is nothing like it. I just love storytelling. I am a ham actor with a pencil. I love performing on canvas or on paper or right now on a digital screen.”

John Pomeroy (1951) animator

Animation professor returns to roots as illustrator of Disney biography https://www.lipscomb.edu/now/animation-professor-returns-roots-illustrator-disney-biography (May 8, 2019)

God, Drawing, Painting, Art

“The pretty game of calling on the children of the audience of "Peter Pan" to declare their faith in fairies seemed to me disastrous—a game of men and women at the expense of children, a cumbersome frolic at best and an artificial, a tyrannous use of the adult sense of sentimental humour against the helpless. I could with better conscience use my superior physical strength upon them than exploit them for love of my own condescension. (And yet Sir J. Barrie has written the most adorable "pretending" story ever written about a child.)No, children love a fairy story not because they think it true, but because they think it untrue, and because it makes no fraudulent appeal to their excellent good sense. That sense they are delighted to put aside while they "pretend." That is their own word.[…] "Let's pretend," not "Let's believe."”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

Their mother does not put "Let's pretend" into the child's mouth; she finds it there. Without it there is no play. But the pretending is always drama and never deception or self-deception.</p>
"V. Fairies", pp. 32–33
Childhood (1913)

Faith, Game, Children, Thinking

“In the early 1890’s it required a great deal of courage for a woman to publicly to acknowledge before an audience that she believed in suffrage for her sex when she knew a majority did not.”

Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) African Americans' rights activist

Source: p.144

Courage, Sex

“Every safety measure has been taken, and I know I’m in good hands. The important thing for an actor or performer is to get constant visibility; now with films being stalled, this is the perfect opportunity for us to impress audiences every day. After the show, I will make my Bollywood debut, and down south, I really hope I get a chance to work with Vijay Sethupathi sir.”

Nikki Tamboli (1996) Indian Actress

Bigg Boss 14: Nikki Tamboli wants to work with Vijay Sethupathi after reality show

Perfection, Chance, Making love, Hope

“It was a great chance to show viewers who I really am. I’m a really bubbly, talkative person who loves to make fun of others and keep everyone laughing. I want the audiences to keep looking out for “that attractive girl” who takes on all the tasks and keeps entertaining them.”

Nikki Tamboli (1996) Indian Actress

Bigg Boss 14: Nikki Tamboli wants to work with Vijay Sethupathi after reality show

Chance, Girl, Personality, Love

“Ichthyology, the study of fishes. It looks like a big, boring word, but it's actually quite exciting, because ichthyology is the only "ology" with "YOLO" in it. Now, to the cool kids in the audience, you already know, YOLO stands for "you only live once," and because I only have one life, I'm going to spend it doing what I always dreamt of doing: seeing the hidden wonders of the world and discovering new species. And that's what I get to do.”

Prosanta Chakrabarty (1978) American ichthyologist

Source: Clues to prehistoric times, found in blind cavefish https://www.ted.com/talks/prosanta_chakrabarty_clues_to_prehistoric_times_found_in_blind_cavefish (February 2016)

World, Fish, Life, Study

“Soon we will have people on Mars, and we truly will be multi-planetary. And the young boy or the young girl who will be going to Mars could be in this audience or listening today. I have wanted to work at JPL on these missions since I was 14 years old and I am privileged to be a part of it. And this is a remarkable time in the space program, and we are all in this journey together. So the next time you think you don't have enough time in your day, just remember, it's all a matter of your Earthly perspective.”

Nagin Cox (1965) NASA scientist

Source: What time is it on Mars? https://www.ted.com/talks/nagin_cox_what_time_is_it_on_mars (November 2016)

Time, Girl, People, Boy

“May you be able to overclimb the obstacles custom, tradition, thoughtlessness, and habit have built up; may even such poor words as mine win you to the realization that there is no joy in life like the joy of discipleship, no so-called sacrifice that can be made which is not as the dross cast into the fire where gold comes out instead; oh! that in the hearts of even a few of you — one here and there scattered through this vast audience — the feeble words may light the eternal flame, and the passing movement caused by speech may grow into resolute will and a determined endeavor. Oh, then for you, too, in the near future there awaits the Finding of the Master, for you also who seek shall find; if you knock with the hammer of these Qualifications, surely the door shall swing open before you, that you may find Him, as I have been blessed enough to find Him, that you may know that service which is perfect freedom, that joy which is in the presence of the Master.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: Initiation, The Perfecting of Man, 1923, p. 83

Freedom, Light, Future, Heart

“We’ve been doing this for awhile, when you’ve been doing this a long time, you cross your fingers and hope for the best, but you never know. To find an audience that’s passionate, that’s as good as it gets.”

Jonas Pate (1970) American screenwriter, director and producer

Brothers born in Winston-Salem have a hit with 'Outer Banks' https://journalnow.com/entertainment/brothers-born-in-winston-salem-have-a-hit-with-outer-banks/article_5480fa10-b39b-5d7e-b71d-3b8dc2615760.html (April 25, 2020)

Passion, Time, Hope

“The evil of storytelling is you’re trying to make the audience complicit in murder — Kill the guy! Jump him! And then once you’ve done it, it’s like, I’ve killed this guy, now what? If you do that kind of violence in a show like this, you have to bring the audience along with you and then question their judgement.”

Bruno Heller (1960) British screenwriter

The Mentalist Finale Interview https://ew.com/article/2011/05/26/the-mentalist-finale/ (May 26, 2011)

Guy, Making love, Evil, Question

“But I want very much to be accepted as a good actor, and I have to admit this. Just before the first screenings of The Color Purple, I had some doubts about my name. Steven had told me the billing would read, "And Introducing Whoopi Goldberg as Celie." I had nightmares that when it appeared, a little ripple of laughter would run through the audience and it would grow and grow until it became a horrendous roar of guffaws. Well, I forced myself to go to a screening, and when my name appeared, all I could think was, "Oh, my, how elegant that looks!"”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

And no one laughed at all."
As quoted in "Hoopla of Movie Stardom Catches Up With Whoopi" by Philip Wuntch, Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel (January 3, 1986), p. 6S.

Reading, Thinking, Appearance, Color

“A few social media ideas for public servants looking to build an audience: - Endorse Single-Payer Medicare for All, - Hold Wall Street Accountable, - Make Min Wage = Living Wage, - Cancel Puerto Rican Debt, - End For-Profit Prisons & ICE Detention, - Fight for a #GreenNewDeal”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1080300714126200832 (1 January 2019) <br class="br">2019, January 2019

Fight, Idea, Making love

“Even if the room they rented was smaller than the heifer’s stall and darker than a morning privy, they stayed to look at their number, hear themselves in an audience, feel themselves moving down the street among hundreds of others who moved the way they did, and who, when they spoke, regardless of the accent, treated language like the same intricate, malleable toy designed for their play.”

Toni Morrison book Jazz

Jazz (1991) Ch. 2

Way, Feeling

“All the experience I had in television, radio, theater, stage and films gave me confidence in front of crowds. Because of that, I can talk to an audience of a thousand people without a moment's nervousness, and talk without a script for hours.”

Sara Shane (1928–2022) American actress

Interview with Elaine Hollingsworth https://web.archive.org/web/20071003020618/http://www.tarzan.cc/int-sarashane.html (July 9, 2007)

Self-confidence, Confidence, People

“Don't post for the sake of likes and retweets, post to build relationships with your audience.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

“Great marketers engage their audiences.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

“Nine times out of ten, salespeople don't succeed on social media, because they don't have a clear strategy on how to build an audience and provide value.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

Time

“You try to cope with the mass audience, but in fact you are not doing something for them—I would be fighting with myself. I thought, I don’t have to make big films, I can make small films that I can be happy with. I can find my own audience.”

Wong Kar-wai (1958) Hong Kong screenwriter, film producer and film director

"Wong Kar-wai by Han Ong" in Bomb Magazine (1 Janaury 1998) https://bombmagazine.org/articles/wong-kar-wai-1/

Happiness, Fight

“You have to be prepared and be available. That is truly the challenge. That is why we study and that is what we work for. That is what you get paid the big bucks for; to have your eyes saying one thing and your mouth saying another. The audience picks up on it.”

Lee Arenberg (1962) American actor

INTERVIEW – LEE ARENBERG https://crypticrock.com/interview-lee-arenberg/ (September 5, 2014)

Study

“Science wasn’t a show-business talent, conducted in large halls and decided by audience applause.”

Charles Sheffield book Convergence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Convergence (1997), Chapter 6 (p. 321)

Business, Science

“Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Arundhati Roy: They are trying to keep me destabilised. Anybody who says anything is in danger https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jun/05/arundhati-roy-keep-destabilised-danger, (5 June 2011) <br class="br">Articles, Interviews

Hunger, People

“I try to get everybody to enter my world real quickly. I think the audience starts to see that it’s a person going through a struggle, (and) with each performance piece, the exchange just keeps growing.”

Lane Nishikawa American actor and filmmaker

On his writing technique in “‘Mission’ Accomplished? Not Yet, but Closer: Theater: Lane Nishikawa, star of a one-man show about diversity, says mainstream representation of Asian Americans is better than it was.” https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-04-18-ca-55954-story.html in Los Angeles Times (1995 Apr 18)

Personality, World, Thinking

“I've often started off with a lawyer joke, a complete caricature of a lawyer who's been nasty, greedy, and unethical. But I've stopped that practice. I gradually realized that the lawyers in the audience didn't think the jokes were funny and the non-lawyers didn't know they were jokes.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

1997 speech at University of Virginia Law School, as quoted in Marc Galanter, Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture (2006), p. 3.
Books, articles, and speeches

Thinking

“My job as an actor is to just tell the story as best I can from my character's point of view and let the audience decide.”

Sebastian Stan (1982) Romanian-American actor

Quote

“The dramaturgy of audiences and communities is crucial: how they think, how they hear stories, how they relate to the theatre…That was an interesting curve. Not having lived in the Midwest, I found that it’s segregated, it’s tribal.”

Chay Yew (1975) Singaoprean playwriter

On connecting with audiences in “Artistic director Chay Yew: ‘Audiences come here wanting a dialogue about America’” https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/interviews/2019/artistic-director-chay-yew-audiences-come-here-wanting-to-have-a-dialogue-about-america/ in The Stage (2019 Aug 5)

Communication, Thinking

“I think especially television is a conversation between the writer and the audience, and they're bringing all of their humanity to it. The actors are really just this conduit in the middle, who everybody kind of thinks of like the player, but no, we're really the instrument.”

Penn Badgley (1986) American actor and musician

Source: "Penn Badgley Explores Joe Goldberg's 'Primal' Parenting In You Season 3" in ELLE https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a37886117/penn-badgley-you-season-3-interview/ (18 October 2021)

Thinking

“I was just so happy that I got a role and could give a performance. I still feel nervous at the thought of meeting an audience through the screen. I never dreamed that the show would become such a global sensation.”

HoYeon Jung (1994) South Korean model, actress

Source: "Exclusive: How Squid Game’s Hoyeon Jung Went from Model to Star of Netflix’s Biggest Hit" in Vogue https://www.vogue.com/article/squid-game-star-hoyeon-jung-interview (7 October 2021)

Happiness, Dreams, Feeling

“With books or film I want to commemorate our youth and the sacrifices they made. No matter how bitter the time was, there is always something beautiful. I want to satisfy my nostalgia and hope [my work] is touching enough to move audiences who may not have the same experiences.”

Geling Yan (1958) Chinese writer and screenwriter

Source: "Turning Loss into Beauty: The Tragedies of Geling Yan" in The Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB930264290705115630 (25 June 1999)

Nostalgia, Books, Youth, Time

“I am on the radio for one reason: to attract the largest audience I can and hold it. I am not in a think tank.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

1990s

Thinking

“Having contact with the audience, seeing the smiles… feeling the emotions that it transmits through its unmistakable warmth, for those who work in the show, means love.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Avere contatto con il pubblico, vedere i sorrisi... sentire le emozioni che trasmette attraverso il suo inconfondibile calore, per chi lavora nello spettacolo, significa amore.
Source: prevale.net

Love, Smile, Feeling

“I can be pretty much an open book but, like everyone, I have my little secrets and moments I keep to myself and for my family. The key for me is to always add value. It could be a jollof rice hack or sharing an experience; whatever it is, I hope it helps my audience somehow.”

Sisi Yemmie (1984) Nigerian Youtuber

Source: https://guardian.ng/life/spotlight/sisi-yemmie-the-inspirational-vlogger/ Sisi yemmie speaking at an interview.

Secret, Books, Family, Hope

“I treat my audience like my friends. Whatever information I feel I would love to share with a friend, I will share the same on my social platforms, especially if it is content that will add value to my audience.”

Sisi Yemmie (1984) Nigerian Youtuber

Source: https://guardian.ng/life/spotlight/sisi-yemmie-the-inspirational-vlogger/ Sir yemmie speaking at an interview.

Love, Feeling

“I have lived my whole life on the stage and screen before you. I found purpose and meaning in your response. For an actor that is no greater loss than the loss of his audience. I can part the Red Sea, but I can't part with you, which is why I won't exclude you from this stage in my life.
For now, I'm not changing anything. I will insist on work when I can; the doctors will insist on rest when I must. If you see a little less spring in my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you will know why. And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Winning the Cultural War (1999), Video farewell (2002)

Spring, Sea, Life, Change

“In the perspective of the audience, the movies that make me think are the most precious. I want to naturally be projected onto the film or role. From there, applying my tendencies and emotions is what I believe is the most natural way for actors to tell a story.”

Gong Yoo (1979) South Korean actor

Source: "Gong Yoo Talks About The Difficulties Of Getting Out Of Character And His Approach As An Actor" https://www.soompi.com/article/1464450wpp/gong-yoo-talks-about-the-difficulties-of-getting-out-of-character-and-his-approach-as-an-actor (15 April 2021)

Nature, Thinking, Way