Idina Menzel

“Nerves are good. They keep you alive.”

“I would like to get another job in London or tour there. I miss my friends.”

“With young people, I always say, 'You're not doing anyone any favours by withholding your power.' As women, we do that a lot because we are afraid of being misunderstood or perceived as too strong. But the older I'm getting, the more I realise you have to let that go.”

“People have these incredible expectations. So instead of being inspired by, say, Joni Mitchell's music, I look at it and say to myself, 'I'm going to quit - why would I think of writing or performing after listening to that?'”

“I'm a mom - I'm lucky if I get to shower in the morning. Luckily, nail polish stays on my toes. I've been so bad on the upkeep, though.”

“I just enjoy being onstage and relating to the audience.”

“Everything's always about being homogenized and following in a group. The people who stand out always have the most problems.”

“That's what I love about songwriting - that you can write something about your own experiences and think it's completely specific to you, and then people can take away a completely different meaning for themselves. I really love that. I think you've been successful at writing a song when it has a larger life than yourself.”

“I think I hid my singing talent from a lot of my friends at school because I didn't want to alienate anyone. If everyone was singing along in the car to a Madonna song, I didn't join in because when we're younger we're afraid of sticking out or showing off, when in fact we should own those things that make us really unique.”

“I tend to have a pattern of playing misunderstood characters.”

“I always like to sing barefoot, but when I first started doing these dates with the symphonies, I of course thought I should clean up my act, being a Jewish girl from Long Island with a little bit of a trucker mouth. So I wore a gown and some high heels.”

“It's been a dream of mine to run my own summer camp. I went to one as a kid, and I put on productions, and got lots of confidence.”

“The sky in Texas is the most amazing sky in the whole country, I think, like you can see more sky in Texas than you can see anywhere else in the world.”

“There has to be a balance between power and vulnerability. That's something I feel I have in my own life, something I struggle with and - on a good day - like about myself.”

“I would love to play 'Funny Girl' or 'Evita,' but I idolize the women who have played those parts. I don't know if there needs to be another version of those shows.”

“As a mom, I don't have much time for beauty.”

“I would love to work with Matt Damon.”

“I was once an extra in a Bruce Springsteen video where they did a live performance video at Tramps. I forget the name of the song.”

“I'm smart enough to know to work with smart people.”

“As I get older, I realize all I've done is sing and act and hone those skills.”