Harry Connick, Jr. Quotes

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

I've been all over the world. I love New York, I love Paris, San Francisco, so many places. But there's no place like New Orleans. It's got the best food. It's got the best music. It's got the best people. It's got the most fun stuff to do.

I do the things I like to do. It's sort of a bigger version of having more than one hobby.

New Orleans is my essence, my soul, my muse...

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.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s, when I was 5 years old, my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

With a tone so rich, I would never be afraid of the dark. Steinway is the only and the best!

There are people who can't stand me, they say, 'God, he makes me sick', or, 'He's creepy', but it doesn't affect me too badly.

It is really rare to find someone you really, really love and that you want to spend your life with and all that stuff that goes along with being married. I am one of those lucky people. And I think she feels that way too. So the romantic stuff is easy because you want them to be happy.

'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.

With imagination, I'll get there.

It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most.

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.

Safety's just danger, out of place.

In my life I find that memories of the spirit linger and sweeten long after memories of the brain have faded.

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've learned that people latch onto labels and stereotypes. There was a period when I was asked in every single interview how I liked being the new Frank Sinatra... I think people will soon realize that I do a lot more than interpret old songs.

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.

Everything I do is part of my passion. I do the things I like to do. It's sort of a bigger version of having more than one hobby. I love to play piano, sing, and act. I love to do all those things.

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.

If you think of the public lives of people who've been unlucky, it seems showbiz is some tumultuous crazy world but some are fortunate and some unfortunate. All I can do is keep striving to be better.

As a character, you're working within the realm of what's on the [script] page.

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.

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.

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.

I never dated much. I dated one girl before my wife, and that was it.

Marriage has made me a lot happier and I'm deeply in love with my wife, and I thank God for her every day.

I live in Connecticut, but eventually I'd like to move back to New Orleans. I grew up there; the pace is a bit slower. Plus, I love crawfish and po'boys.

[My mother is] a half-Chinese, half-Jamaican woman, who grew up the ninth of nine kids, getting a law degree from Harvard. Academically brilliant, but also incredibly strong-willed and ethical. My mother was like that, my sister is, and my wife is too.

Let's kick the tires and light the fires, big daddy.

You know what's funny? I don't ever feel the need to escape. I have a strong marriage. I like my life. You hear about these guys having midlife crises - I don't see that happening to me.

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

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

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

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.

I love orchestrating music and conducting and being on Broadway.

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.

No matter what genre of music you play when you rack up a couple years of experience, you have your own point of view no matter who it is that is coming in front of you whether it's a pop artist or a country artist. Whoever.

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.

You know, things kind of happen organically and, you know, Broadway sort of happened out of a career in performing and - which happened out of practicing piano when I was a kid.

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.

If you can say the lyrics almost like a poem and they stand up, that's a great thing. Some songs have great lyrics and I don't like the melodies, and vice versa.

I'm sure that there are reasonable people that had some reasonable projections about the future of New Orleans, but none of those could include not trying to rebuild the city and make it better than it was before.

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.

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.

I sing because I’ve forgotten how to scream.

I have no doubt that the government of this great nation will work with its people to lead New Orleans and the Gulf Coast back to an enlightened, proud, safe part of the world.

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.

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

I'm looking at [my daughter] right now. To think that I am her dad is the greatest honor in the world. She's an amazing kid. We have a great relationship and she is one of my closest friends. I seek her advice. I like to know what she thinks about things, and she's helped me through some really tough times. I just look forward to years of developing that relationship.