Inspirational Musical Theatre Quotes

Mitchell Maxwell's Maxims
•You have to create your own professional path. There's no longer a roadmap for an artistic career.
•Follow your heart and the money will follow.
•Create a benchmark of your own progress. If you never look down while you're climbing the ladder you won't know how far you've come.
•Don't define success by net worth, define it by character. Success, as it's measured by society, is a fleeting condition.
•Affirm your value. Tell the world "I am an artist," not "I want to be an artist."
•You must actively live your dream. Wishing and hoping for someday doesn't make it happen. Get out there and get involved.
•When you look into the abyss you find your character.
•Young people too often let the fear of failure keep them from trying. You have to get bloody, sweaty and rejected in order to succeed.
•Get your face out of Facebook and into somebody's face. Close your e-mail and pick up the phone. Personal contact still speaks loudest.
•No one is entitled to act entitled. Be willing to work hard.
•If you're going to buck the norm you're going to have to embrace the challenges.
•You have to love the journey if you're going to work in the arts.
•Only listen to people who agree with your vision.
•A little anxiety is good but don't let it become fear, fear makes you inert.
•Find your own unique voice. Leave your individual imprint on the world, not a copy of someone else.
•Draw strength ~ Mitchell Maxwell

There's a kid in the middle of nowhere who's sitting there living for Tony performances. Singing and flipping along with the Pippins, and Wickeds, and Kinkys, Matildas, and Mormons's. So we might reassure that kid, and do something to spur that kid, 'cause I promise you, all of us up here tonight, we were that kid. ~ Neil Patrick Harris

I'm grateful to be working. The most exciting thing for me is that I never get bored - I've done comedy, drama, musical theatre and now Shakespeare. ~ Sheridan Smith

In the world of musical theatre, if everyone says it's a good idea, you wonder why nobody has done it before. ~ Tim Rice

Let's sing our way out of this ~ Isabel Fraire

I'm passionate about music, and I feel that theatre has an extraordinarily musical ability in the way it operates on the audience. ~ Simon McBurney

I think there's that weird bastardization where musical theatre actors are treated as almost like vaudevillians or circus performers - that we're somehow not good actors because we sing and dance. ~ Laura Benanti

I should write a musical. That is probably one of the final areas that I should pay attention to, because it does kind of involve everything. It's got theatre, it's got young, pretty people ... And it's got money! ~ Rufus Wainwright

The wise musicians are those who play what they can master. ~ Duke Ellington

In 1969, I wrote a musical called 'Mother Earth.' It was a rock musical with an ecology theme. We did it at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Southern California where I was a member. It was a smash hit in this small theater. ~ Toni Tennille

I went to an Arts High School, so everyone there was kind of anti-clique, though they still happened. I guess I was in the theatre-dork clique. Not to be confused with the musical-theatre-dork clique. ~ Finn Wittrock

Only become a musician if there is absolutely no other way you can make a living. ~ Kirke Mechem

When it all comes true Just the way you planned It's funny but the bells don't ring It's a quiet thing. ~ Fred Ebb

Musical theatre is something that I always wanted to be a part of, and my first ever role on the West End as Joseph in 'Joseph And The Technicolor Dreamcoat' gave me a taste for it. ~ Gareth Gates

I started out in theatre and I definitely have wanted to add extra musical elements to my music with both imagery and text. ~ Glenn Branca

My first role was in the George Gershwin musical 'Crazy for You' at the Orlando Repertory Theatre when I was 11 - I grew up in Florida - and I wasn't old enough to be in it, but they let me anyway. I was just this little shrimp in a leotard. ~ Aubrey Peeples

I love musical theatre and my dream is to do Once On This Island. ~ Syesha Mercado

My father was a classical singer of baroque music, and my older sister was in musical theatre, and I thought about doing the same thing but then realised straight acting was for me. ~ Antonia Thomas

I used to do puppet theatre and also mime and musical theatre in Florida for competitions and festivals, which was great. I was very much involved in theatre when I was in college. ~ Wesley Snipes

I was born with music inside me ~ Ray Charles

When I was a freshman in high school, my drama teacher, an incredible, inspirational genius, the guy who got me into acting, he encouraged me to get the lead in a musical. They didn't have any guys. ~ Casey Affleck

I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre, and that's really where my training is. ~ Christopher Walken

I did commercials and voice-overs as a kid, and it just lead to musical theatre opportunities. ~ Jennifer Damiano

When people ask me if musical theatre should be taught in music colleges, I reply that there is no need. All anyone needs to study is the second act of La Boheme because it is the most tightly constructed piece of musical theatre that there is. It is practically director-proof: you can't stage it badly because it just works too well. If you can write La Boheme, you can write anything. I would also recommend studying Britten's Peter Grimes. ~ Andrew Lloyd Webber

I was really, really, really enthusiastic as a kid. I was up for anything. I was hugely into music and theatre. I was a big musical theatre kid; I loved reading. ~ Amanda Marshall

The truth is I love musical theatre and always have. ~ Idina Menzel

I was lucky enough to see the original cast of 'In the Heights.' This one blew my mind. The infusion of Latin, hip hop and rap with musical theatre, great storytelling and talent was a powerful combination to me during a time when I'd not been moved by much! ~ Josh Young

There is nothing wrong with loving musical theatre, but I think that it's naive to hold it superior any other musical classification, especially since these other genres have been influencing Broadway more and more in recent decades. ~ Stephanie D'Abruzzo

I wanted to be a musical theatre actress - I wanted to play Sally Bowles, forever and ever always. ~ Carey Mulligan

I did a lot of musical theatre when I was younger, so I would love to go back and do that again someday. ~ Hayley McFarland

When I look back at what musical theatre music and show music meant to me, first of all - more than anything - what it meant to me was work. As I was growing up, I realized that singing and performing was my strong suit. ~ Jason Mraz

I guess I think of a musical as something in which the music is sort of like the engine of the piece - whether it is in the theatre or in film. ~ John Kander

The main reason for the break was a combination of travel and going back to university, which drew me into theatre more than music. I did stuff on acoustic guitar when I was traveling, filed it away and made notes, without it being musical notation. Just taped the odd thing, did a sketch, stuck it on a cassette. I thought at some point, I'll go back to it. Some of it I did use in '84-'85 when I started working in the Free Theatre in Christchurch. So it might seem like I had given up after the Pin Group, but I just went into a different avenue. ~ Roy Montgomery

Opera is musical theatre, and the music can teach you so much about the theatre. Very often I use musical terms to think about how I comport myself on stage: I employ 'rubati,' 'ostinati,' 'cadenze.' Finding these parallels is very fascinating for me. ~ Toni Servillo

I love musical theatre because I love doing a live performance eight times a week. ~ Gareth Gates

When I used to do musical theatre, my dad refused to come backstage. He never wanted to see the props up close or the sets up close. He didn't want to see the magic. ~ Nia Vardalos

I have ambitions to do a Broadway record one of these days and get in the studio with like, a real orchestra. I'm a big musical theatre geek. ~ Mandy Moore

I've always loved musical theatre. I've always been a big kind of closeted musical theatre nerd. I really have always dreamed about being able to do musical theatre. ~ John Gallagher, Jr.

I just love performing so much, and I threw myself into every musical theater production that was going in my home town and at school. And then, I went to the National Youth Music Theatre, which was really a galvanizing experience for me when I was 17. ~ Gugu Mbatha-Raw

We might be hollow, but we're brave ~ Lorde

And what could be a hotter ticket than the improbable triumph of 'The Book of Mormon,' the musical-comedy moon shot of the season? Its creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, of Comedy Central's 'South Park,' are the most unlikely Rodgers and Hammerstein team ever to bowl a thundering strike. ~ James Wolcott

It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception. ~ Albert Einstein

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

I went into musical theatre, which I'm not really cut out for - I'm not as skilled at it as other people. ~ Richard C. Armitage

Look, I'm 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math! ~ Nathan Lane

Frankly I don't listen to lyrics (a problem in that I apparently work in musical theatre) I just want a good tune that doesn't require the use of too much grey matter. ~ Christian Campbell

I grew up dancing, and for a while in college, I was a gym rat. I finally realized ... I'm going to create a little more balance in my life and make exercise something that I enjoy doing. So I went back to dance when I started doing more musical theatre, and I've just found that it's the best thing that works for my body. ~ Christine Lakin

It may not feel too classy, begging just to eat
But you know who does that?
Lassie, and she always gets a treat

So you wonder what your part is
Because you're homeless and depressed But home is where the heart is
So your real home's in your chest

Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got villains they must face
They're not as cool as mine
But folks you know it's fine to know your place

Everyone's a hero in their own way
In their own not-that-heroic way
So I thank my girlfriend Penny
Yeah, we totally had sex
She showed me there's so many different muscles I can flex

There's the deltoids of compassion,
There's the abs of being kind
It's not enough to bash in heads
You've got to bash in minds

Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got something they can do Get up go out and fly
Especially that guy, he smells like poo

Everyone's a hero in their own way
You and you and mostly me and you
I'm poverty's new sheriff
And I'm bashing in the slums
A hero doesn't care if you're a bunch of scary alcoholic bums

Everybody!

Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone can blaze a hero's trail
Don't worry if it's hard
If you're not a friggin 'tard you will prevail

Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's a hero in their... ~ Joss Whedon

I would rather play Chiquita Banana and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve. ~ Xavier Cugat