Latest Audra McDonald Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

  Source: www.ebony.com

• 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

  Source: www.ebony.com

• 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

  Source: www.ebony.com

• I find that I'm just drawn to anything that's going to challenge me as an actress. So any time I get a chance to do a little comedy, that's also a nice change for me. Most of the time people think of me as a dramatic actress and singer. And there's a challenge there because comedy is hard. What do they say? "Dying is easy; comedy is hard."

  Audra McDonald

  Nice, Thinking, People

  Source: www.elle.com

• 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

  Source: www.elle.com

• 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

  Source: www.achievement.org

• I think for a lot of people that are in performing arts, it's easy to fall into the trap of starting to confuse what's real life and what's not, because to your body it's all real.

  Audra McDonald

  Art, Real, Fall

  Source: www.achievement.org

• 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

  Source: www.achievement.org

• A doctor can be a doctor today and they will be a doctor tomorrow. But an actor, well you're not working at anything right now, whereas the doctor is going to have their job tomorrow, for the most part. So there's the insecurity of that, and you have to go where the work is.

  Audra McDonald

  Jobs, Doctors, Insecurity

• 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

• It's easy to spend - especially in this day and age - to spend your time not being in the present. It's very easy to be way ahead. What's tomorrow and the day after that?

  Audra McDonald

  Age, Way, Tomorrow

  Source: www.achievement.org

• 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

  Source: www.achievement.org

• I think it's absolutely essential to encourage creativity. I think we come in as these wide-eyed sponges, ready to create and absorb and evolve, and I think more often than not we are squashed, the older we get.

  Audra McDonald

  Creativity, Thinking, Essentials

  Source: www.achievement.org

• 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

  Source: www.achievement.org

• 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

  Source: www.achievement.org

• 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

  Source: www.achievement.org

• I've had to play characters who I absolutely disagree with, as far as their politics, as far as their religion, and their stance on certain social issues, I completely disagree with them. But I have to go in and find who they are and get to their core, into their truth, and have absolute faith and believe in that, in order to portray it. So you have to walk in a lot of different shoes, in that you can't help but have your mind open as a result of that.

  Audra McDonald

  Believe, Character, Shoes

  Source: www.achievement.org

• I think it comes down to the type of personality that the performing arts seem to attract. And that's outgoing, very sensitive - sometimes incredibly insecure - people, that for some reason need a lot of validation. They have a lot that they have to get out, and they choose one of the hardest professions in the world in which to exist, being as sensitive as you need to be.

  Audra McDonald

  Art, Insecure, Thinking

• 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

• 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

  Source: www.achievement.org

• 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

  Source: www.achievement.org

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

  Audra McDonald

  Ends

  Source: www.achievement.org

• 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