Harvey Fierstein

“I got the regular call, that they were doing a Broadway musical of Hairspray, and would I come and audition. I was familiar with the movie, because at the time it came out my lover wrote for Premiere magazine, and we had to see everything.”

“I really am a theater person. That means you put something out there, and you let it go. Tomorrow night is a new performance.”

“When I went into 'Fiddler,' I wondered about the response I'd get - the backlash because I'm openly gay. There was none. I toured Canada and America, and not one single review suggested that I played the role gay or that I seemed anything but Tevye.”

“I've been dating since I was 15 years old, and I just don't seem to do it well.”

“My play Safe Sex was picked apart because critics thought it was untrue. It was a play in which no one had AIDS, but the characters talked about how it was going to change their lives.”

“How often are the perpetrators of hate-crimes discovered to be self-loathing? Valued individuals do not strike out against strangers.”