Audra McDonald Quotes

I also think there's something about dance, music and the arts that transcends all other types of communication and expression.

I'm a person of the arts. I love the arts very, very, very much. And ah, I'm a musician, I'm a director, I'm a writer, I'm a composer, I'm a producer, and I love the medium. I love film very, very much. I think it's the most expressive of all of the art mediums.

I don't think I've succeeded in making any really good films. There are moments, scenes, whole movements that sing. It has all added up to a cinema of sorts, even though I'm still learning my art.

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness. There exists a striking association between creativity and manic depression. Why are more creative people prone to madness? They have more than average amounts of energies and abilities to see things in a fresh and original way—then because they also have depression, I think they’re more in touch with human suffering.

Art in the art world, and culture in general, are branches of the media, which produces our political and social thinking climate.

I can't really explain the feeling of acting. It makes you the most insecure you can possibly be.

I think watching a movie that simply confirms my feelings is a waste of time. That applies not only to movies, but also to books and every form of art.

Music has always been something I wanted to do. I think just the idea of performing and entertaining and being in the studio is really what I wanted to know how that felt. I started to get into it around the same time I got into acting, but it turned into a side project because my movies were taking up most of my time.

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.

I think people who are attracted to the fashion industry are people who are really insecure and looking for a certain identity.

In so many areas, when you think about it, you never really see an actor cross over to music. It always music to acting and it's receivable because when music gives a form of entertainment of art to where it's very personable, it's a passion, it's an intimate type of art to when you hear it, it's them.

I know now that everybody in the arts is forever a beginner. Experience counts for a great deal and very little. Every night onstage I feel I am starting from scratch, still not quite sure what I am doing and where I am going, thrown by the simplest thing that goes wrong.

I'm a very insecure and emotional person still looking to be loved by everyone else.

I think that for thousands of years people have made the observation that there are certain kinds of extreme depressive states that seem to be more likely to produce philosophers, people in the arts, unusually brilliant scientists.

I can be such a people pleaser, and so worried about what people are thinking or feeling insecure.

I don't even want to think of myself as an actor because it's such an insecure place to go.

I've been immersed in manga since I was a kid. I grew up with this culture. So I started to think about how to compare manga to contemporary art.

Find the most puzzling kind of art you can think of, and then go out and try to approximate it with your camera. Take a photograph that corresponds to it. (Assignment to students.)

I think most people who decide to become a musician have to be prepared for some degree of struggle. It makes the art better if you go through some struggles. To be an artist, in any form, you have to develop some sense of compassion and empathy - it's an important quality for everyone to have, on a human level. But I think, as part of our job, you have to be able to do that, so suffering, tends - if you allow it - to let you look on the bright side. It will help with those senses.

I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment. From a filmmaker's standpoint, that's so rare and pure in a way that I'm sure is way more complicated than it appears.

As much as the needs of fact, the needs of the spirit and the senses, must be satisfied. Architecture is as much a part of the realm of art as it is of technology; the fusion of thinking and feeling.

I just make what I'm making, and then one day I won't want to make it anymore. I think that's a luxury we should be able to have as people, especially as artists.

Well you know I've been in that place too where you worry about what everybody thinks of you, am I popular, do people care, are they looking at me, all that stuff. That's a drag, man. Having to worry about fitting in, am I cool enough to ANYTHING.

I would love to do comedies and I would love to do dramas. I'm very passionate about art, music, drawing, acting, so I'd like to have the chance to get the larger choice regarding acting.

To be honest, I don't necessarily think you have to be an actor to act. You don't have to be a musician to make great music. If it comes along and you put your all into it, the outcome is what's important.