Kelli O'Hara Quotations

My mom's side of the family is from Arkansas!

I suppose there are a lot of reasons to be jaded or sarcastic or bitter in life, but I hang on to the reasons why life is beautiful.

The 'Carousel' overture has always been one of my all-time favorite pieces of music.

I've had great opportunities to show different sides of myself, but the challenge will always be getting either people to let you do it or finding the right things to do in order to do it.

It is such a luxury to open a new book that's highly recommended by friends - either an inspirational yet humorously self-deprecating memoir, or a page-turning piece of fiction.

Corned beef and cabbage - that's our favorite holiday meal when all the O' Haras gather around the table.

I don't want to be famous for being famous.

I was raised in Oklahoma. I was actually born in Tulsa, but I grew up in a small town on the west side of Oklahoma called Elk City on a farm, where my dad grew up, actually.

I think anything emotional adds to your acting and singing, no matter what it is that you go through. It will always add to it, never take away.

By no means, I can't sing any rock and roll.

I feel so rich in my emotions and in my life and so grateful when I'm home and so grateful when I'm at work.

I've always wanted my characters to have more dimension and realistic cores than the ingenue material often provides. It's been a challenge.

In my special place, room service could only consist of my husband making me a breakfast of eggs, avocados, and hummus. And coffee with milk.

My father named me Kelli because 'Kelli O'Hara' just sounded so Irish.

I think it can be a good idea to know what you do well and use that to open the door for yourself. Once you open the door, close it behind you, and start to make changes.

I don't ever think about the roads I didn't take because I spend too much time thinking what's ahead. I don't go backwards.

I don't have that many family and friends.

I don't read reviews, because if you believe the good ones, you have to believe the bad.

'South Pacific' has a definite heaviness that people don't realize. It's got a seriousness and a message.

I don't mind talking about my family and how to balance it all. But, in today's world, we should probably be asking both women and men about work and family and how to balance the two.

When you step out and do a song in a musical, the easier thing to do is make it funny. But when those transitions become necessary, when they aren't camp, that, to me, is magic. I've done musical comedies and enjoyed them, but subject matter that's deeper and more realistic is always what's appealed to me most.

When you're pregnant, things - at least for me - get very sincere and very wholesome, and it's about family, and singing becomes about warmth.

Every part has its relief when I'm done with it.

Everyone has these ideas, especially about the middle of the country, about people being backwards and three-toothed.

I never really try to watch the movie of the things I've been in.

To play a character is to inhabit the world and the life of that character.

When I've done TV and film, when it's offered to me, I loved doing it, and I would do it again, but the ins and outs of auditioning is - that's time away from my kids.

Shakespeare has great ability to skirt around a subject and portray human nature.

My great-grandfather, Peter O'Hara, was born in Ireland, I believe, in County Clare. His father, my great-great-grandfather, had actually come to America a generation before when times were very bad in Ireland. He worked in the Pennsylvania area and did well with horses and farming.

I don't ever sing classically when I am singing a contemporary score - I kind of try to fit in whatever needs to happen.

I'm a mother, and when you have children, there's a protection. You'll do a lot to protect them, to do what's best for them.

I was able to do concerts all the way up until two weeks before I had the baby; I thought I was stopping a month ahead, but he was three weeks early.

Playing characters allows me to do things I may not always do, while singing in concerts allows me to really find my own voice and grow.

When I was a kid, I would sing in people's living rooms and for different little family things.

We didn't have a lot of live theater in Oklahoma. I didn't visit New York when I was growing up. I watched movie musicals, and I believed in an idealistic, idyllic version of Broadway.

With a revival, you're compared to somebody else.

Everyone's story is different, and we can't really be inside them.

I've always wanted to do a Shakespeare play.

Some songs depend heavily on the character, but, for the most part, a great song begs for reinterpretation every time it is sung, even when in character.

There is such a cliche to certain roles that all I can do is to try to make them realistic and work for the times, and so the audience actually won't see me as a caricature of something, but rather as an actual person.

It's always hard - it's a little counterintuitive to leave your baby at any point during the infancy.

It's really important that I have a personal life.

I love to play things that are out-of-the-box. It's just that I don't always get the chance to do it!

I love playing an ingenue, and I love doing revivals, and I will continue to do that.

If I get tickled in a certain way, I actually lose the ability to stand. I don't mean to, but something happens to my knees, and I fall on the ground.

The hardest role that I've ever tried to play was Clara Johnson in 'Light in the Piazza' at Lincoln Center. It was the least fun I've ever had, but the most beautiful experience I've ever had. I could not understand her. I could not put my feet in her shoes. I came home every night, and I was depressed.

I mean, it feels like a homecoming in a really wonderfully comfortable place to be - the same director, the same musical director, my same dressing room! [laughs] It's a great place to build something with freedom.

If you have kids, in my opinion, your priorities better shift to them.

I want to work, but I certainly am not going to be clawing at empty things when I can completely fill up my bucket with them - the other is a waste of my time.

Our natural thing to do when we break away from our parents and our family is to decide in how many ways they were wrong and bad, and the older you get you start to realize, "By 'bad' I mean 'different'" and then you get a little bit older and you think, "And by 'different' I mean 'pretty awesome but just not like me.'"

I think a lot of the way I live my life is not just for me, which has sometimes been a burden. A lot of the choices I make are in order to make them [my parents] proud.

I'm grateful that I feel the way that I do - to make choices based on a lot of people's feelings - even though it has been hard at times, especially when I was younger, but I feel like it has led me down the right road for me. I'm very happy with what has come of that.

I think in this business [acting] there's the option to do a lot of things and say, "I don't care. I'm just going to do what I want," but what I do affects a lot of people.

If a man thinks you're beautiful or thinks you're strong or thinks you're smart, take the power and use it, but don't need it.

I'm not a victim. And the people who are victims of something, my heart is completely with them. But I'm not. I know I've been treated like a woman in this business [acting]. I mean I've got lots of stories, but they don't have any control over me.

A lot of what is famous about film making are the movie stars and what is considered a movie star is a lot of great acting, but also a lot of physical beauty.

You can only ask to be respected if you respect yourself.

We can make choices, but we can be vulnerable; we can do the wrong thing, but the wrong thing for all the right reasons. I think it [life] is basically about forgiveness, and not about someone else forgiving you, but you forgiving yourself. I think we all want a lot of that.

Sometimes I'm considered, I guess, a subtle actor. Maybe I'm less of a showman and more just trying to tell the story. I don't know what the perception is. I just want to tell the story so the story as a whole works as opposed to just making sure that I work.

Sometimes I think people are famous because they're themselves and they do a role and you see them do it.

I try to do different roles and try to immerse myself deeply and see what they need to be that's different than the last one.

Your Western ideas about love are ridiculous. A woman is put on earth to please a man and a man should have many women, and a woman should only have one man.

When doing a revival, you have a lot of people asking you questions about someone who played it before, and to me that's neither here nor there - it has no bearing on the material that I have to use. The material that is written down in a score and script that the writers originally used is what I use.

Sunday's my favorite day - that one matinee in the middle of the day!

I do always try to find the goodness in somebody. I can't possibly believe in somebody if they don't have a core.

My spiritual life is an interesting thing. It's pretty private. I was raised Catholic in the Baptist Bible belt, so my spirituality was challenged and very much a private thing and it continues to be.

One thing I really, truly believe in is having something greater than myself to be grateful to.

In this particular business [cinema], you don't choose your own experiences. They start to happen and then they start to peel off and make other ones happen, and then you can start choosing. But it happens to you.

I love feeling like I have purpose and maybe that's the purpose I'm giving myself.

American theatre, to me, represents zeroing down on what the need is to get inside the personal hearts of people. I think it's really beautiful if we can keep doing that instead of just fluffing everything up and hiding again.

I'm trying to think of myself at a quiet time. I need to do better with a quiet mind because I'm constantly going and I think that's what feeds me. I've been that way my whole life. But I don't think I picture things so much as I talk them through. Words, words, words. Words and melody.

I'm an actress. I'm not putting my life on the line for any great cause. I don't step out too boldly about anything except my children and family.

If you act brave, you can seem brave, and if you do it enough, you can talk yourself into believing you're brave.

I've been singing since I was nine or ten.

I loved to sing and I loved to act, and I didn’t want to continue opera because I wanted to act.

You always want to be the person who doesn't need to be included, but it feels damn good to be among you people. My first Broadway show was Master Class, and I saw Audra McDonald. The one that sealed the deal was Ragtime, with Marin Mazzie. My first big role was with John Lithgow, and he taught me the ropes. Norm Lewis sang the night I met my husband. It makes me feel like I have a family.

When I'm given an opportunity with music and goodness, then I want to do that [play that role]. I want to go all the way to the edge of that and make it as big as I can.

When you're pregnant, things-at least for me-get very sincere and very wholesome, and it's about family, and singing becomes about warmth.