Harry Connick, Jr. Quotes

I married my best friend. And I listen! Ultimately I've been very fortunate - I understand that that doesn't happen for everybody but it happened for us and we take it very seriously.

I struggle every day with trying to be a better dad, a better husband, better musician, better artist. It consumes me, and I don't see an end in sight.

You know, I feel as comfortable in an uncomfortable situation as I do when things are going smoothly.

Live theater is just an incredibly powerful medium, and I think anyone who goes, whether they know about it or not, if they see something that sort of fits with them, it's kind of hard to deny that they had a good time.

I guess play piano, you know, because that's the thing I started doing when I was a little kid.

I'm gay, it's all a big scam. My kids don't even know who their mother is.

With imagination, I'll get there.

You basically have to play everything (in New Orleans), because you're getting calls to play gigs of all different styles, from classical to R&B to funk; modern jazz to traditional jazz.

We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes, 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

You won't talk to anybody who breaks lyrics down more thoroughly. It's just a complete deconstruction, and when you start to rebuild, nobody has the capacity to do it like me. Which is not to say I'm better, it's just that there's a unique quality to everyone.

You have to do things that do good for you and when there's an uncharted course, you have to figure out how to get through it.

We would like to get to a point in our society where people really are colorblind and this message would not have to be told anymore. Unfortunately, we're not there yet.

I only tour in short bursts, I'm only ever away from my family and three daughters for a month or two.

I don’t really get shaken very much. People could heckle me, a spotlight could go out, I could forget a lyric... I’m not operating on somebody’s brain, you know what I mean? So I just think it’s all funny.

I used to go to Bourbon Street when I was a kid and there would be club after club after club of people who were around when the music started. I mean these are legendary, maybe not so well known, but legendary musicians.

I mean these people who work on Broadway, in my opinion, are the most gifted of everyone. I mean they really know how to dance. They really know how to act. They really know how to sing. They know how to perform.

There's an album by Antonio Carlos Jobim - the album with 'The Girl From Ipanema.' That's the most seductive music ever.

I just liked the feeling of being on stage. My parents weren't pushing me, they didn't have to, I was obsessed.

New Orleans is a city of paradox. Sin, salvation, sex, sanctification, so intertwined yet so separate.

I think a dad has to make his daughter feel that he's genuinely interested in what she's going through.

New Orleans is my essence, my soul, my muse, and I can only dream that one day she will recapture her glory. I will do everything within my power to make that happen and to help in any way I can to ease the suffering of my city, my people!

I love my wife and I know she loves me. We're best friends. We're just lucky to have found each other. It takes a lot of work but I just feel very blessed that I found the right person. It's a very fortunate situation and not everyone has that.

A lot of the music that you listen to now is because of the things that the Meters did, the Neville Brothers did, and they're there, the guys who invented those beats that the guys sample today. Such an enormous opportunity.

Everything I do is part of my passion.

I had a couple albums out that sold well for who I was at the time and the type of music I played. People started recognizing my name and face and it helped sell bigger venues. I had a bigger spotlight and I had to live up to it but I thrived under that challenge. It expedited the creative process. If I was on stage in front of 300 people instead of 30, I had to work harder at my performances because I had a greater responsibility. It was very exciting, but creative too.

When I'm acting, I'm in a different place, singing is the last thing on my mind, and when I'm on stage, there's no acting at all involved, not even presentation, it's just who I am.

Well, my dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years.

'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone.

I'm a big fan of [Frank] Sinatra, he was the best at what he did. The last thing I do is model my career after him, though, because we do different things. He was a great singer and a great actor ... It never crossed my mind to emulate his career, because we have different interests.

My Dad is my hero. He's 85 now and he is in great health. He is handsome and strong. He has an incredible moral and ethical backbone. I couldn't have been luckier with my parents.

Life is really like that: there are certain things that are wonderful and certain things that are not so wonderful and what you are going to do about it. With grace and with dignity, move through them. Deal with them.

Many people in and out of showbiz live their lives in different ways. I try to be the best I can be.

The whole 'American Idol' way of looking at things is the antithesis of what I grew up with. There are a whole lot of kids wanting to be famous now, whereas if I'd even mentioned that word to one of my teachers, I would have got into a whole load of trouble.

I get terrible reviews everywhere I go.

[Frank Sinatra] was an incredible artist, the best at what he did, but it never occurred to me to model my career after what he did. There was no one I modeled my career after because there was no one else who did what I did.

I'm not a movie star. People know me, but they don't necessarily know what they know me for. I get recognised, but it's not like Justin Bieber. It's a nice thing, people are cool.

All I really want - when I pray , I don't really ask for anything. All I want to do is God's will and make the best decisions I can. I don't go out and preach.

Golf is good, it means I get some fresh air and exercise, take my mind off work and see some of the landscape of the place I'm visiting.

I wake up everyday and try to be the best husband, father and entertainer I can be. I'm no different offstage or talking to you or onstage than I am going to dinner with my family. It's all the same place and I apply the same values to all I do. It works for me.

My mom and I were super tight. I think she really wanted me to be an artist, you know? She used to like to tell people she wanted to be Beethoven's mother. That was her thing. She wanted to be the mother of this person.

I’m really boring, man. Like, I’m really dull. And I think people may think that I have this glamorous, fun lifestyle, but it’s pretty dull. But that’s what I like.

You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless, but there's a lot of work that goes into it.

Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest words ever written, we go back to the greatest songs and bring about my interpretation of them.

I have a big ego, and I'm a confident person, but when it comes down to being a jerk, that doesn't work for me, I tried it... for about ten years.

I like to jump some rope and swing kettle bells to get my blood pumping. It makes my voice sound better, and it clears my head.

To be a good kisser start slow, definitely ramp into it and remember somebody's on the other side of your mouth!

I just liked the feeling of being on stage.

As you work on something, whether it's a painting or a piece of music, it's going to evolve. A relationship is like that too. I don't have to think, What can I do to spice up my marriage? Because as time goes on, she changes, I change. I'm not married to the same girl I met by the pool. I love this woman more than I loved the person I married, but just in a different way.