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Creativity Quote by Robert Goulet

"I like being on this stage because it keeps me thinking"

About this Quote

There is a quietly radical idea tucked inside Goulet's plainspoken line: the stage is not a pedestal, it's a pressure chamber. Coming from a singer whose persona often read as smooth, controlled, and old-school showbiz, "it keeps me thinking" punctures the myth that performance is about autopilot charisma. He frames the spotlight as mental labor, not just emotional display. That choice matters. It shifts the musician's job from delivering a perfected product to staying alert inside a live, shifting situation.

The intent feels twofold. First, it's a defense of craft. In an era when "natural talent" gets sold as the whole story, Goulet points to the cognitive choreography behind the curtain: timing, breath, phrasing, reading a room, adjusting to a band, recovering from a mistake without telegraphing it. Second, it's a personal admission: comfort is the enemy. He likes the stage precisely because it refuses to let him coast. The stage, for him, is a kind of public thinking-out-loud, where the stakes sharpen attention.

The subtext is also about identity and relevance. Goulet came up in a mid-century entertainment ecosystem built on polish and certainty, yet live performance is where certainty gets tested nightly. By celebrating the stage as a place that provokes thought, he sidesteps nostalgia and insists on performance as an ongoing problem to solve. It's a modest sentence that smuggles in a modern ethos: staying alive artistically means staying mentally awake.

Quote Details

TopicMusic
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Goulet, Robert. (2026, January 16). I like being on this stage because it keeps me thinking. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-like-being-on-this-stage-because-it-keeps-me-116004/

Chicago Style
Goulet, Robert. "I like being on this stage because it keeps me thinking." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-like-being-on-this-stage-because-it-keeps-me-116004/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I like being on this stage because it keeps me thinking." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-like-being-on-this-stage-because-it-keeps-me-116004/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Robert Goulet on the Stage as Mental Discipline
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About the Author

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Robert Goulet (November 26, 1933 - October 30, 2007) was a Musician from USA.

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