Quotes from John Cameron Mitchell

In rock and roll, homosexuality was accepted, but it was less cool to say it.

It's cool when frat boys say, 'Yeah, 'Hedwig!' I'd like to see that same thing happen with 'Shortbus.'

I sometimes buy albums that I don't like now, but that I know I will like. Coming out was the same thing. In high school, I thought, 'I know I'm going to have to deal with this, but I'm not confident enough now.' But when I finally did, my whole life changed.

If you go for the money first and try to think of what other people want to see, you change your original inspiration and perhaps put out something that's less original and less personal and maybe less satisfying.

We're all weirdly single, middle-aged women with too much money who look to fill the void with too much shopping.

My mom was a little weepy. My dad was very logical about it. Once they realized you can't change, they wanted to know that you can be happy and be gay. Once they realized that, they were very cool about it.

Doing 'Hedwig' was so hard that I kind of burned out on acting.

Compared to other liberal cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam, New Yorkers are always trying to do something, make art or love or money or whatever, and they have this phobia about standing still.

I went to a very small Catholic school. It wasn't an easy place to be growing up gay.

Neil Patrick Harris is a superman of entertainment.

New York is so unique, and you are not always encouraged to consider the people in the city your neighbors because of the fast pace and surface anonymity.

My favorite playwright is probably Samuel Beckett, and he was always laughing at the abyss.

I come from the theater, and there is a real collaborative history there.

The things that interest me are less to do with perhaps finding myself and more to do with surviving and mercy and forgiveness.

People know what 'Hedwig' is now, and that's wonderful. It's not the same as being swamped for being on 'The Big Bang Theory,' but it's much more comfortable.

Anger is so constructive.

It's the weird thing that actors do: You jumped across that building because the scene required it.

Nothing is a calling card. Everything is what you do. If you do it in order to get somewhere else, you're not actually doing it. If you're thinking, 'What is the weird thing I want to make with my friends?' money and other things will come later.

I think things are dishonest if they're not aware of sadness.

I have a weird propensity to know what's going to happen in the future.

I remember being afraid of doing drag when I was younger because I didn't really like my feminine side - most gay guys at some point are told that that's the worst part of you, so that becomes a negative thing.

Drag is a little scary, especially for a gay man who's not comfortable with his feminine side.

I like the fact that it's like The Ramones. You just have to change your name, and you're a Ramone. You just have to put the wig on, and you're Hedwig. Women have played it. Gay men, straight men, you know.

Obviously, when you get into larger budgets, you have less of that freedom, and I just - I'm not a person that tends to make stories for those larger budgets. To me, it's not much fun to have that kind of pressure.