Quotes from John Cameron Mitchell

I love when a director says, "I don't know."

There are a lot of silly projects out there.

There's nothing more Broadway than 'Hedwig.' It's very family-friendly. There's innuendo and stuff, but not more than you'd see on TV.

I like all kinds of input.

Oftentimes, experiencing tragedy very young can strangely give you a kind of equilibrium.

Some people go off to an ashram or they, you know, have a midlife crisis and buy a sports car. For me, I do 'Hedwig,' and I see it's a midlife crisis maybe, and I see what's next. And it's a good trampoline, maybe, into the next part of my life.

I've avoided situations where I wouldn't have creative freedom.

I love British female directors lately.

You get all these French directors who have all these pretty, vacuous stars of their movies - from Jean Seberg on - who have become iconic but were never really good actors.

I've always liked a good joke that everybody can laugh at.

As you get older, you treasure the beautiful things of the past but also see things more clearly.

I think I was scared of the drag thing, as a lot of gay boys are. It's sort of knocked out of you in junior high. I wouldn't find guys who were very feminine attractive. Then, doing 'Hedwig,' I got to be man and woman, really butch and really femme at the same time, and I realized, this is kind of the ideal.

Coming out as a gay man, it was very much about finding my own identity and dealing with labeling.

Acceptance and assimilation, you know, breeds mediocrity and perhaps an even more sheep-like conformism in terms of what kind of music you're supposed to listen to if you're gay... What are you supposed to look like? What's your body supposed to look like?

Getting the blood moving through your body does do wonders for your complexion.

Chaos is the natural state, and theater tries to make sense of it, but it's got to be a little messy to be believable.

Queerness isn't just Lady Gaga and overpriced drinks and fauxhawks. It's James Baldwin and Bea Arthur and Gertrude Stein and Gore Vidal.

'Hedwig' is not autobiographical, but what she goes through is clearly a big metaphor. She doesn't want to be what she is, but she comes to an understanding that what happened to her has actually made her whole.

I walk out of my apartment, and St. Vincent's is standing there like a ghost ship. That was the ground zero of AIDS in New York: a conservative institution that quickly adapted to its unconventional patients and made heroic efforts to try and save them.

I did take comfort in the vespers and compline. I might have become a monk if I hadn't come out.

I'm all for information diets, which are helpful for the mood and for the art.

If I wanted to make a lot of money with 'Hedwig,' I could have spent all my time on it. But that's boring.

I never even had a MySpace.

Humor without sadness underneath it feels cheap and aggressive.