Keith Johnstone famous quotes

04-28-2025

If you have a good idea, open your mouth and say something else.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Ideas #Mouths
The best laughs are on the recognition of truth.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Laughing #Recognition
Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks pre-arranged, This is because they accept all offers madeâ€”which is something no â€˜normalâ€™ person would do.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Looks #Normal #Accepting
If you believe you're good already, you don't need to do extra stuff to impress us. Your best work comes when you're absorbed; because then your ego is away.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Believe #Ego #Needs
Every time you go the way the audience expects, they'll think you're original. People laugh with pleasure at the obvious.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Thinking #People #Laughing
None of us really grow up. All we ever do is learn how to behave in public.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Growing Up #Grows #Behave
Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more 'respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Teacher #Children #Teaching
Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more 'respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children. Many 'well-adjusted' adults are bitter, uncreative, frightened, unimaginative, and rather hostile people. Instead of assuming they were born that way, or that that's what being an adult entails, we might consider them as people damaged by their education and upbringing.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Teacher #Children #Teaching
An artist who is inspired is being obvious. Heâ€™s not making any decisions, heâ€™s not weighing one idea against another. Heâ€™s accepting his first thoughts.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Artist #Ideas #Decision
In life most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. Bad improvisers block action often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Block #Skills #Degrees
Good impro can make you laugh, we love it, but soon the content is forgotten. Good scenes from The Life Game stay with you always. They haunt you.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Games #Laughing #Forgotten
Enjoy things even when youâ€™re screwing up.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Enjoy
There are people who prefer to say â€˜Yesâ€™, and there are people who prefer to say â€˜Noâ€™. Those who say â€˜Yesâ€™ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say â€˜Noâ€™ are rewarded by the safety they attain.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Adventure #People #Safety
In a normal education everything is designed to suppress spontaneity, but I wanted to develop it.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Normal #Spontaneity #Wanted
Truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Ideas #Truth Is #Psychotic
I think my brain is much more intelligent than I am...so I tend to trust it.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Intelligent #Thinking #Brain
As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull. I could still remember the amazing intensity of the world I'd lived in as a child, but I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age - just as a lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Children #Eye #Perception
Don't come on to be funny - come on to solve problems.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Problem #Solve
The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partnerâ€™s imagination.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Lying #Skills #Imagination
In a scene [where the improvisers must interact] without the letter S, the audience is waiting for you to lose - so they can laugh at you. Don't try to win.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Winning #Laughing #Waiting
Most people I meet are secretly convinced that theyâ€™re a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Average #People #Energy
At school any spontaneous act was likely to get me into trouble. I learned never to act on impulse, and that whatever came into my mind first should be rejected in favour of better ideas. I learned that my imagination Wasnâ€™t â€˜goodâ€™ enough. I learned that the first idea wasÂ unsatisfactory because it was (1) psychotic; (2) obscene; (3) unoriginal.Â The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.
-- Keith Johnstone

#School #Ideas #Imagination
Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be â€˜wrongâ€™, which is what our education encourages us to believe.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Believe #Thinking #Imagination
Suppose Mozart had tried to be original? It would have been like a man at the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all of the rest of us. Striving after originality takes you far away from your true self, and makes your work mediocre.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Men #Self #Trying
I don't even think you should tell the audience you're improvising. It's like an apology in case it's bad : 'we're just making it up' If the improv isn't better than the rehearsed stuff, then you should just rehearse it.
-- Keith Johnstone

#Apology #Thinking #Stuff

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