I believe there's a common ground in what all gifted writers write. It has to do with their wish to turn darkness into light.
Everything I experience influences everything I do.
I love my work, I love the people I work with, I do the best I can.
Our actions are the ground we walk on.
Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.
I try to get that across in the work, to try to, if I'm lucky, to make this world a little bit better for all of us before I check out. And that's if I'm lucky, I don't always get to have that privilege but I try always.
If you told me I could only do one thing, I would choose live concerts.
I'm blessed. I have a 13-year-old girl's eye and a 14 year-old boy's eye. I've been given the gift of sight by people who decided to donate organs. I try to do as much organ-donor work as I can.
Everyone's entitled to their own experience.
My wife will tell you that if you feel my hands before I walk on for a performance, you could chill a bottle of wine.
All great men usually are awakened by the great women in their lives. No matter what friction is there, if that relationship was there, that usually is their best friend, at the end of the day.
Peace in the Middle East isn't going to be created by another war or violent act on the other side.
Arthur Miller said one of my favorite lines ever, that he had the mother say to her two sons about a very unstable father in Death of a Salesman. She said, "Attention must be paid." It's one of the most resonant lines that I think he ever wrote, and I think attention must be paid to the truth.
When I was your age, I used to treat the crust like it was just there to hold the good stuff in. I used to leave the whole back end of it on the plate. As I got older, I learned to appreciate the crust.
My sense of religion is Einstein's sense of relativity. I don't believe in God. I believe that energy never dies. So the possibility exists that you might be breathing in some other form of Moses or Buddha or Muhammad or Bobby Kennedy or Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Jesus.
In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.
If you're sick, watch funny movies.
I'm so sad that I'm old enough to play, and I'm so grateful that I am. All that clichéd things, you really do learn something if you get the luck of being able to hang around. Even if it's a rough ride, you learn.
I don't want people to sit and process the song. I want them to just let them bathe over them.
I've been very blessed in my personal life and in my career and I have never been ungrateful for what I have.
Who is the bad guy? Is America possibly the bad guy?
People who go into the arts are often hurt people. Many are manic-depressive. Some have tried suicide and some have succeeded. It's just part of the game. We are people who are oversensitive. That's why we're in this business, because of our need to communicate.
I'm active in PAX, which is a gun awareness organization. We treat gun safety as a public health issue.
I hope that something can be done in our piece that reflects on the attention that needs to be paid to the most vulnerable people, like refugees in the world right now, that have to not be politicized, but saved, literally.
The great love of my life is music.
