Quotes from Mandy Patinkin

Well, I'm not a critic, I'm just a worker. So, I'm always grateful for anything the critics say - good or bad.

The time it takes to get something done is the time it takes.

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.

Bob Hurwitz, the president of Nonesuch, the company that releases my records, is a mentor. He taught me how to assemble a script to record an album.

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

I don't know what's going to happen in life, so I don't think it's fair that I know what's going to happen in 'Homeland.'

The great fun for me is these collaborators. I'm nothing by myself. Being with these people, whether it's the 'Homeland' cast or stage collaborators, they make you everything you are. They make you come to work. They make you be alive.

We must not allow the horrific actions of madmen to cut us off from our humanity.

If I have a tombstone when it's all over, it will say, 'He tried to connect.'

You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.

In the hands of good writers, you have the opportunity to present both sides of an opinion equally and that you leave it to the audience to listen and then make up their own minds.

On occasion, a well-constructed drama can do what no reality or news program can do, what Shakespeare does brilliantly, is it can show both sides' opinions.

I'm blessed. I have a 13-year-old girl's eye and a 14 year-old boy's eye. I've been given the gift of sight by people who decided to donate organs. I try to do as much organ-donor work as I can.

I think it's fair to say I'm attracted to playing characters who are rather intense.

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.

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

The great love of my life is music.

There's something about singing that I just love. It makes me feel freer than anything in the world.

Mandy is not calm. So that's acting. I'm acting. And, and I love playing someone calm.

I'm Jewish and I can sing and I'm alive.

Singing in Yiddish was a great thrill for me and came about through Joe Papp, the founder of The Public Theater.

The songs I love to sing are story songs, from Yiddish songs to Tom Waits.

I did not grow up singing Yiddish.

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.