Quotes from Joel Grey

My father was Mickey Katz, who worked with Spike Jones and then went on to improvise some successful Yiddish parodies, some of which I perform. My favorite was 'Geshray of the Vilde Kotchke,' his version of 'Cry of the Wild Goose.'

The Yiddish language is so rich and unusual that I've always been hooked on its sounds, although I don't speak it.

I'm very slow. I'm a slow learner.

Being at the Play House, the only way I could see my life was that I would be an actor in a company, doing a lead role one week, a small part the next. That's what I thought I was going to be.

I don't like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I'm a gay man.

The fundamental job of the actor is to tell about the human condition, to be a voice for the truest ideas and deepest emotions.

I did a benefit one night at Carnegie Hall with Bono and Lady Gaga and Rufus Wainwright.

I was already in my early twenties, but I looked much younger because I was fresh-faced and, well, short. So I did songs such as 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah' and jokes such as describing current events as 'ancient history.' Boy, did the audience roar at that one.

I'm always interested in the challenge of doing something new.

I'm essentially an actor. And the fact that I got away with singing and dancing for a long time is still a miracle to me.

Theater is the most important thing in life for me.

I really didn't feel that my motion picture career was going the way I wanted it to go.

I don't like to bad-mouth other shows, but I was very disturbed after seeing 'Starlight Express.' It had very little to do with musical comedy as I know it. It had to do with sound and spectacle and records and technology and amplification.

My daughter, Jennifer Grey, was in 'Dirty Dancing,' which was shot in the Catskill Mountains, where the great old Jewish entertainers used to appear. It was the first time she'd been to the Borscht Belt, and I don't think she's been back since.

I am concerned about the musical theater, selfishly, because I love it.

I really did start a whole way of thinking about musical theater.

My father was the one who used to stand up in the middle of a number to flutter his lips and make sputtering sounds into lyrics.

Often, entertainment goes deeper, in terms of ideas, than the newspapers.

You can be taking two steps forward as an actor, but if a movie doesn't make money, you might as well be taking two steps backwards. It's all about economics.

When I read a script, the important thing is that I can connect in some way with that character and have some idea from what his story is that I can tell that story too, because that's all acting is, is storytelling.

My grandparents from the old country, Latvia, were all musical on my father's side.

Larry Hagman and I are very old friends.

I've always wanted to do, oddly enough, a live variety show, but only with a live audience.

My dad would take me downtown, and I'd stand backstage and watch him in the vaudeville pit band. I was 6 or 7. He was a musician, a band leader, a wonderful clarinetist and saxophone player.