Daily Inspiration Quote by Colin Mochrie

Terror is the product; confidence is the delivery system. Colin Mochrie frames improv as a high-wire act with no net, then casually admits the trick: you only let the fear in at the last possible second. The first sentence is a neat piece of professional honesty that also flatters the audience. A "paying audience" isn’t just a crowd; it’s a contract. They’ve purchased certainty, and he’s promising to hand them delight using the one resource he doesn’t have: a script. "Absolutely nothing" is strategic exaggeration, because the real inventory is experience, trust in scene partners, and a mental toolbox of patterns. Calling it nothing keeps the mystique intact.

The subtext is about compartmentalization. Mochrie doesn’t deny anxiety; he schedules it. That’s a working performer’s mindset, not a motivational poster: dread is acknowledged as useful fuel, then locked in a closet once the lights hit. The line break between "right before we go on" and "once we're out there" captures the switch from private panic to public play, the moment when adrenaline stops being a threat and becomes a resource.

Context matters: Mochrie is associated with Whose Line Is It Anyway?, a show built on the illusion of effortless invention. This quote punctures that illusion without ruining it. He lets you glimpse the pre-show nausea, then reassures you that the craft works. The charm is its paradox: the only way to look relaxed improvising is to have first, briefly, imagined disaster.