Keith Johnstone - Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (1979)

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There are people who prefer to say 'Yes', and there are people who prefer to say 'No'. Those who say 'Yes' are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say 'No' are rewarded by the safety they attain.

Keith Johnstone
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
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
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 Wasn't 'good' enough. I learned that the first idea was unsatisfactory because it was (1) psychotic; (2) obscene; (3) unoriginal. The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.

Keith Johnstone
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
In a normal education everything is designed to suppress spontaneity, but I wanted to develop it.

Keith Johnstone
Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they'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
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
An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He's not making any decisions, he's not weighing one idea against another. He's accepting his first thoughts.

Keith Johnstone
The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner's imagination.

Keith Johnstone
Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be 'wrong', which is what our education encourages us to believe.

Keith Johnstone