Skip to main content

Daily Inspiration Quote by Sally Kellerman

"It hasn't been smooth or delightful every minute, there were lean years and rough years, but it's been exciting and good and I'm thrilled to be an actress and a singer and to have spent my life this way"

About this Quote

Kellerman’s line does what the best show-business self-myths do: it demotes struggle without denying it. “It hasn’t been smooth or delightful every minute” is a deliberately modest opening, almost conversational, as if she’s waving off the glossy version of a career that outsiders imagine arrives on a red carpet. Then she tightens the screw with “lean years and rough years,” a phrase that carries the economy of a tour bus and the loneliness of auditions, but refuses the melodrama of the suffering-artist narrative. The hardship is real, but it’s background music, not the chorus.

The pivot is the real reveal: excitement as a moral argument. “Exciting and good” isn’t poetic; it’s practical. She’s describing a life that keeps paying, not necessarily in money, but in charge. That word choice matters coming from a performer who moved between acting and singing, between spotlight and side roads. The double identity (“an actress and a singer”) isn’t just a resume flex; it’s a claim of artistic fullness, the refusal to be filed neatly into one lane by an industry that loves lanes.

The subtext is gratitude without apology. She’s not asking permission to feel satisfied, and she’s not repackaging hardship as a brand. “I’m thrilled” lands as the final insistence: the point of a career isn’t uninterrupted pleasure, it’s the sustained ability to want it again tomorrow.

Quote Details

TopicCareer
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Kellerman, Sally. (2026, January 15). It hasn't been smooth or delightful every minute, there were lean years and rough years, but it's been exciting and good and I'm thrilled to be an actress and a singer and to have spent my life this way. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-hasnt-been-smooth-or-delightful-every-minute-151351/

Chicago Style
Kellerman, Sally. "It hasn't been smooth or delightful every minute, there were lean years and rough years, but it's been exciting and good and I'm thrilled to be an actress and a singer and to have spent my life this way." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-hasnt-been-smooth-or-delightful-every-minute-151351/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"It hasn't been smooth or delightful every minute, there were lean years and rough years, but it's been exciting and good and I'm thrilled to be an actress and a singer and to have spent my life this way." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/it-hasnt-been-smooth-or-delightful-every-minute-151351/. Accessed 8 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Sally Add to List
A Thrilling Life: Actress and Singer Sally Kellerman's Journey
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

USA Flag

Sally Kellerman (born June 2, 1937) is a Actress from USA.

19 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes