Mandy Patinkin

“I still have the sword of Inigo Montoya - it's mine!”

“So I'm truly an actor who sings, and not a singer who acts.”

“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.”

“I saw 'Hamilton' when it was at the Public, and I just wept profusely in my seat because this is a form I love deeply, and to watch it be reinvented in such a genius, gifted way and executed by such a brilliant company of human beings, I was overwhelmed with not just appreciation for the piece of work itself but for the possibility.”

“I guess I am sometimes over the top on stage, but then, that is my personality. I'm over the top in real life, too.”

“Ted Cruz ,when he was running for president, was a huge 'Princess Bride' fan. He would quote the lines and, you know, trying to win families and everything.”

“I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.”

“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.”

“The best work I can do is to take myself as much as I can out of it and get it as simple as I can.”

“I'm on the board of directors for Peace Now, which works tirelessly between the Palestinians and the Israelis to create peace in the Middle East and we've never been closer.”

“I didn't think of myself as a singer. I'm an actor who recites words, and sometimes that happens to be on musical notes.”

“When I'm on the road with concerts, people ask me to autograph my CDs, but more and more they come up with the cookbooks.”

“I have no problem with violence, I have no problem playing horrible people.”

“You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.”

“If a movie musical came along and the part was right and somebody wanted me to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

“One of the greatest gifts that 'Homeland' has given me is it's affirming on a daily basis.”

“I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.”

“Actually, the language in Shakespeare is wonderfully musical. You need to hear the music to connect with the words.”

“I think Bill Finn's one of the geniuses of theatre, and James Lapine's one of the diamonds of my generation. The two together are a joy!”

“I would love for Senator Cruz, and everyone creating fear mongering and hatred, to consider creating hope, optimism and love.”