Top 70 Quotes & Sayings by Audra McDonald

All you can do is do good work, and do the good work for the sake of doing the good work and your evolution as an artist. That's what's most important to me.

When I was doing 'A Raisin in the Sun' with Sean Combs, we began in bed, and he would give me 10 kisses and an 11th for luck before the play began.

I auditioned for Julliard because I wanted to live in New York, and I wanted to be on Broadway at the time. Julliard seemed like right way to get there.

When you become a parent, it blows you open in ways that you never thought possible in terms of a level of love that I know I never thought I could possibly have.

I never in a million years thought that my life would unfold the way it has.

One thing that is constantly on my iPod is India Arie - I like her a lot; I listen to her a lot. I think she is just a spectacular artist.

I used to be really into Bikram yoga.

When I wanted to audition for a dinner-theater junior troupe in my hometown, I needed to have a piece of musical theater music to sing. I wasn't sure what I wanted to use. My mom and dad suggested that I sing 'Edelweiss' because I knew it from the music box.

My voice isn't an instrument I can just hang up on a hook.

I used to practice Tony speeches in my bathroom with my hairbrush.

The arts are so important not only to society but to ourselves as human beings. It keeps in touch with our own humanity. So access to the arts in any way, shape, or form is vital.

I find that I'm just drawn to anything that's going to challenge me as an actress. So, anything that's going to help me grow.

I certainly miss playing piano, and I really wish I did it more - it's really a very therapeutic thing to do for me. I just need to be home for more than a few minutes to be able to play more, I guess.

Some days, I don't recognise my country, and other days, I see people being vocal and passionate, and I think, 'There's my country.'

Parenthood is an adventure.

Maybe it's because my uncle and my parents were always very involved with the civil rights movement, so I just grew up and I was raised that you have to speak out and look out for your fellow man, woman, and child.

I don't see myself as a perfectionist.

I used to think I needed to have drama at all times, or I wouldn't have the fuel for the performance. Now I know that's not true. That doesn't mean I don't feel it, but I recognize it when I do and put the brakes on. And if the performance isn't what it might have been once, I've learned not to judge myself as much.

I've been so lucky, with incredible mentors along the way, that now I need to be that for someone else.

I believe in not whistling backstage and not saying the name of the Scottish play.

Without theater, I don't think I would have thought I was a smart person or excelled at anything.

There's no perfect household anywhere.

The authentic Gullah dialect is actually very clipped, and so it would sound almost Jamaican and be very odd to an American audience's ears. It's not the typical Southern dialect that we're used to. It has a much more percussive rhythm to it.

I think they're an incredible honor. I'm grateful and flattered by them. But I have no control over winning awards - I have no control over any of that.

I just wanted to go to New York and be on Broadway, but then I was accepted by Juilliard, where they trained me in classical voice. It was great in the end, but at the time, I thought, 'What am I doing here? This is not my path.' But it was absolutely my path and where I was meant to be.

I am always so excited to get to know a new audience. My concerts are very personal experiences.

I grew up in a nonprofit theater company in the heartland of central California, so I am very aware of the importance that company had not only on my life but my community.

'Go Back Home' encompasses not only actual geographic location but also, for me, back home in the worlds of music and theatre, and back home in terms of making albums again. There are lots of meanings to that.

I came from a really musical family. I studied classical piano because my grandparents were piano teachers, but started doing musical theater at age nine in Fresno, California, and went to a performing arts high school. That was my life.

I admire but don't envy people who have children and also have big, wonderful perfect houses. Maybe Martha Stewart could do it; to me those two things aren't compatible, but I know our children will grow up with a feeling that home is a place of comfort.

The authentic Gullah dialect is actually very clipped, and so it would sound almost Jamaican and be very odd to an American audience's ears. It's not the typical Southern dialect that we're used to.

I choose things that challenge me. I was afraid of the camera - that's why I chose to do 'Private Practice.' It's not like I left the theater.

There's a lot of traps you can fall into when you are playing someone who existed. If it comes out just as impersonation, that's bad; it has to be an embodiment. You have to live it, not just sound and look like it.

I've spent my whole career trying to stay out of any box that anyone could put me in. 'I'm going to do a play now.' 'Now I'll do a musical.' That was my instinct. So I don't feel boxed in. But 'African-American woman' is part of my identity. I don't want to relinquish that - especially as a mother, helping my daughter find her identity.

Anytime I get the chance to sing or work with Michael John, it is such an incredibly fertile and incredibly creative and safe and encouraging environment - and challenging, too, because he is so collaborative!

I feel a connection to many songs that I won't sing because I don't think they are right for me! There is something in my gut that immediately responds. There's no science to it.

Not to get too sort of mystical, but I believe in fate. I believe when roles are presented to me in my life they're for a very specific reason, something for me to learn.

I love talking with elderly people.

When I first was exposed to 'Porgy and Bess' many, many years ago, I was blown away by it - loved the music, overwhelmed by the production at the Met that I saw, and thought I want to play Bess someday. But I also knew they were stereotypes that were considered racist.

I loved my time doing 'Private Practice' in Los Angeles, and I was quite challenged and excited to learn about the art of television, but I missed being on the stage.

I was a little girl with a pot belly and Afro puffs, hyperactive and overdramatic, and I found the theater and I found my home.

Some sort of creativity is within everybody; I think that's just a part of the human spirit. I think there's no human being on earth who is not creative in some way, because I think it's just a part of our genetic makeup.

Pedigree matters: if you break your shoulder trying to open a door, it's much harder to play the game once you get in the room.

I'm taking opportunities as they come; I really am. Not to get too sort of mystical, but I believe in fate. I believe when roles are presented to me in my life they're for a very specific reason, something for me to learn. And it's coming at the right time.

I want to thank all the shoulders of the strong and brave and courageous women that I am standing on.

I guess what I know now that I definitely didn't know as a child, is that being truest to yourself is the greatest weapon in the war to achieve. That sounds really negative, but in conquering or achieving something. I think, as a child, I thought I had to be somebody else.

I'm addicted to those moments when you're on stage and the audience is so quiet you could hear a pin drop and you realize that you're in communion. That's an incredible experience. That's a cosmic experience, as far as I'm concerned, without getting way out there.

Rise above the way society is going to see you and society is going to see you at the absolutely bottom of the totem pole because not only are you female, you are Black. Never believe it and never give into that, that that's where you live or that's who you are.

The only thing I've ever wanted to do in my entire life is to be on Broadway.

I'm still an artist who's searching, trying to evolve, an artist who - nine times out of ten - is dissatisfied with her work, and beats herself, and goes out there and tries again and again, and falls on her face and looks for new challenges.

...I tried to kill myself. It was a feeble attempt, but I did. And I got put in a mental hospital for a month, and I got myself straight and worked on my mental health...it's nothing that I hide. It's nothing to be proud of or to be ashamed of. It's part of my life, you know? And I'm still here!

In the performing arts you have to have thick, thick, thick skin, because of all the rejection you face on a daily basis, and the fact that work never lasts for very long. But you need thin, thin, thin skin in order to access all of your emotions and your creativity so that you can express it. You can't be dead inside. Otherwise you've got nothing to give. So it's a paradox, that we have to exist in both planes in order to do what we do.

Every human being has a dream. I think what's special about the American Dream is that it implies, given everything that's happened with the history of America, that there is the opportunity to make your dream come true. So I think America signifies opportunity.

You feel the communion of the collective consciousness in that moment when you're on stage doing something and the audience is absolutely with you. And the audience becomes a collective entity as well. They come in from separate places and socio-economic backgrounds, and places across the world and days that they've had, and then they come together and they become one collective thing, and experience something in a collective way.

I consider myself to be a feminist. My hope and goal is that I'm going to raise two very strong independent women that won't need anybody, unless they chose that. I want them to be mistresses of their own destiny. But I don't judge people on the other end of that spectrum either.

Theater doesn't bring money in general. That's not why you do it. If you go into theater for money then you've really gone into the wrong business.

For me, I am constantly forcing myself to evolve, because, I think, to stagnate creatively - there's a certain death that happens with that. Because if you're not moving forward and you're not evolving, you're devolving, and I don't want to go backwards. I want to be better at what I do tomorrow than I am today. I don't want to be worse.

Whatever is the scariest is almost always what I end up choosing.

...and if you hear something you know, please sing along. No wait - I take that back - you can't sing along - this is about me now - this is my show.

I think in the end there is one ultimate goal with all my careers, and that is, as a performing artist, you want to explore the deepest, most truthful way to express a point of view, or whatever the character is thinking, or whatever emotion you're trying to convey. I think with the different media it's just about what muscles you use to express that.