Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Brian Stokes Mitchell

My father was a huge jazz fan, so I remember him playing Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn, and Count Basie.

I've always felt that my career was in wiser hands than mine. Whatever, in its good time, is supposed to happen will happen.

On Broadway, you are working with some incredible people, and they have great reasons for doing things the way they do.

Variety is the key to not being bored.

I'm not a pop singer; I'm not a jazz singer. And I know I sing like not a whole lot of people do; I also know that a lot of other people act like I do. And better than I do. But what informs the singing is the acting. They're not separate from each other.

Fear is destructive. Fear and creativity don't mix. Ultimately, it doesn't do you any good.

The Actors Fund is a human services organization, so our focus has been on caring for the entire human as opposed to dealing with the disease.

I love seeing the stars, and I love being around my friends and family.

One of the interesting things an artist does is they keep rediscovering things, whether it's a jazz piece or a role you've done for 3,000 performances or a song you're singing for the 3,000th time. My job is to find that spark that keeps it fresh and alive.

I love rearranging and reimagining tunes, so I want my audience to enjoy hearing songs in a new way and make their own discoveries.

I have been fortunate in my career to play a lot of lead roles. The downside to that is I don't have a life outside of the show. I go on lockdown even with my wife if the show is really difficult and I am having vocal problems.

I'd been playing the piano since I was 6 and wanted to be a composer, but I also wanted to be an actor. I decided to just pursue both and see which won out.

I gravitate to rhythmic music, so I listen to jazz, world music, Indian music, Hawaiian music, all kinds.

Something is guiding my career; I don't know what it is. When I look back at my career, I call myself the most lucky actor in the world. It is all I have ever done. I do master classes, and I tell people not to use me as an example. I do not know anyone like me - not to brag - it is just very unusual.

I'm fortunate that I've been able to work on Broadway, but it doesn't give me an outside life. So I decided to go into the concert world. I do 40 to 50 shows. That takes one to three days a week, and I'm home the rest of the time.

I can count on one hand the number of conductors-composers-arrangers that I enjoy working with, and at the top of that list is Mack Wilberg. I feel like I've known Mack forever. I'm just nuts for him.

Music, for me, is the most sacred of the arts. I say that because music communicates in a way that no other art form can. All great art has a spirit that we recognize and appreciate, but music goes directly to your heart.

People comment on the way that I phrase. And in my 20s, I realized, my phrasing is jazz phrasing. I don't comply strictly with musical theater phrasing. Musical theater tends to be very one and three, and jazz is definitely two and four.

I think I just had it by osmosis: an appreciation of Duke Ellington before I really even knew who he was.

You need raw talent to be successful.

Cabaret presents different challenges, as it is all on me. I love having the freedom to say anything you want - do anything you want. It is a lot of responsibility, and if it works, you get all the kudos, and if not - all the blame.

Doing eight shows a week is hard.

Performing in the theater is a very ethereal profession because you do it once and it goes out into the ether and it goes into people's minds and that's the only place that it ever exists. And it never exists truly; it only exists in the way that people think they remember it. But it's a really powerful way to tell a story and to pass something on.

What I love about piano and vocal is it's incredibly pure, and it gets down to the essence of the song because you're not distracted by an orchestra. When it's just a piano and a voice, it's about the purity of singing the song.

You lose more than you win in life, and that's OK. That's the nature of life.

I love being outside, and I love the fresh air.

When I moved to Los Angeles, I thought, 'Whatever hits, I'll go that direction. If it's music, fine; if it's acting, fine.'

When I was 6 years old, I asked my parents for an organ. I don't have any idea why I wanted an organ.

My favorite music is jazz, actually. It's what I listen to, it's what I was raised on, and it's what I prefer to sing.

It's nearly impossible to make a living in the arts.

My job as an entertainer is to give a great show.

That's what I love about New York. So many people crowded together, pushing against one another. And that's what I hate about New York. So many people crowded together, pushing against one another.

I love doing theater. It's what I grew up in and is my roots. I get a huge fulfillment from it. But if my path is to go someplace else, hey, I'm there.

When you have a community that's strong in the arts, it brings all sorts of attention and different businesses into the community.

For a while, I couldn't get arrested in television because everybody thought of me as that guy on 'Trapper John.' So I thought, 'Great, I'll come out here to New York and do some theater, and when they get tired of me, I'll do something else.'

I love the theater, and I just don't love television like that.

The thing about doing concerts is that it's doing a live show. It's on my schedule. It's songs I want to sing. It's saying what I want to say. It's working with the people I want to work with. I don't have to worry about pleasing other people - I can do what I want, and people come along and go for the ride.

The first audition I did was for 'Trapper John, M.D.' I was surprised to get the part, and then to have it last for seven years was a bonus.

I think the problem is when people hear 'arts education,' they think, 'I don't want my son to be some painter that's going to be hanging in some museum after he dies. I don't want my daughter to be a struggling artist making no money.' People don't realize it's more than that. It's beautiful. It brings beauty to our lives.

I wouldn't call what I do 'dance.'

I studied arranging and orchestration a number of years ago, so I have a home studio and arrange about three-fourths of my songs on the computer. Since writing orchestration is tedious, I often put an arrangement on the keyboard and let someone better-qualified finish it.

Usually, I don't feel comfortable with a character until I've played him before an audience for several performances. It is not until after three months of performing that I learn to discover what I call 'all the nooks and crannies' of the person.

Years ago, I couldn't get arrested in commercials because of my look: 'Is he Jewish, Hispanic, or African-American?' I ended up doing voiceover work, which has been great. Honestly, I can't complain.

My family's very, very mixed. I am, I guess, a kind of melting pot in a person.

My mother was the first African-American policewoman in Seattle - recruited, actually - and she did it for only 2 years, as she did not want to carry a gun. She worked mostly on domestic disturbances. The NAACP wanted her to do it. She did not actually have the temperament to be a cop - she was very sweet. She had a Masters in social work.

I kind of feel the career chose me. My motto has always been, 'Go where I'm wanted.'

I like being different people.

Music is liquid. It's meant to be messed with and played with and stretched and pulled and pushed, I think.

I hate those vacuous musicals, the happy-happy, 'Let's have a good time' shows.

When I was preparing 'Kiss Me, Kate,' I did go to the Museum of Broadcasting and watched an old kinescope of Alfred Drake doing the role on a television special. It was interesting, but I didn't feel any need to try to copy him.

Astaire was ballroom, basically, and Gene Kelly had such athleticism - that's always what I responded to and what just blew my head open when I watched Gene Kelly's numbers. But, Fred Astaire was just so incredibly inventive and so, so smooth - so smooth.

I like to sing the songs people love, like 'Impossible Dream.'

People in the performing arts have a lot of other skills they don't realize they can utilize, and part of what the Actors Fund program is there to do is wake their head up to realize there are other things they can do.

I can't remember ever not singing.

People who are artists professionally are not artists because they want to be artists; they have to be artists. They're compelled to get that creativity out and to share that with others.

That's the magic of art and the magic of theatre: it has the power to transform an audience, an individual, or en masse, to transform them and give them an epiphanal experience that changes their life, opens their hearts and their minds and the way they think.

To me, a theater is a kind of a sacred space. It needs a kind of ceremony, like what happens when you consecrate a church.

Oddly enough, I almost never listen to show tunes. But there are some shows I love, like Adam Guettel's 'Floyd Collins.'

There is a built-in appreciation for music that is so much a part of the LDS culture. Utahns know that music can be divine and can touch a person's spirit in a unique way.

Each time I have performed in Utah, I had a great time, and the audiences seem to enjoy what I do. The audiences are very warm and very appreciative.