Audra McDonald famous quotes

04-17-2025

And I found the theater, and I found my home.
-- Audra McDonald

#Home #Theater #Found
I want to thank all the shoulders of the strong and brave and courageous women that I am standing on,
-- Audra McDonald

#Strong #Brave #Want
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Southern #Dialect #Ears
Whatever is the scariest is almost always what I end up choosing.
-- Audra McDonald

#Ends
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Creativity #Thinking #Makeup
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Home #Theater #Found
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Fall #Artist #Challenges
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Believe #Giving #Black
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Moving #Thinking #Want
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Children #War #Thinking
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Together #Way #World
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Gone #Theater #Ifs
...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!
-- Audra McDonald

#Wisdom #Health #Reality
The only thing I've ever wanted to do in my entire life is to be on Broadway.
-- Audra McDonald

#Broadway #Life Is #Wanted
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Doors #Games #Play
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Way #Quiet #Realizing
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Art #Creativity #Order
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Dream #Thinking #Opportunity
I played Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music and everybody's like, "Well she wouldn't have been this and that, she shouldn't be playing it." Well I'm going to do it and I did it. I've been warned my entire life and I've persisted and that's what I hope my children will do as well.
-- Audra McDonald

#Mother #Children #My Children
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Believe #Fate #Opportunity
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Character #Thinking #Artist
...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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Waiting #Shows #Please
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.
-- Audra McDonald

#Strong #Independent #Destiny
I think a part of evolution is the desire to know yourself, and know the world you live in, and discover everything you can about the world you live in. That world can be the microcosm of your own emotions, or a society, or the cosmos. There's this constant desire for knowledge.
-- Audra McDonald

#Thinking #Desire #Cosmos
Music was all over my house, and all over literally my genetic house, and my house in the literal sense. So I kind of couldn't avoid it.
-- Audra McDonald

#House #Kind #Literal

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