Quotes from Harvey Fierstein

Always admit when you're wrong. You'll save thousands in therapy... and a few friendships too.

How time flies when you're doin all the talking.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.

It would be nice to redefine ourselves - at the moment we are drowning in diversity. That's not a bad thing, its just going to take a while before we refocus.

My father was brought up in an orphanage in the Catskills. He was a factory worker. And because his family wasn't there for him, family was everything. We could disagree inside the house, but outside the house it was us against the world. So when I became a drag actor, he looked sideways but said okay.

You really, really, really have to love what you are going to do in theater because it is an unmerciful life. It's six days a week. It's eight performances a week. And that's doing the exact same thing over and over and over again.

What looks absolutely fabulous in rehearsal can fall flat in front of an audience. The audience dictates what you do or don't change.

I really am a theater person. That means you put something out there, and you let it go. Tomorrow night is a new performance.

Actually, I think the average voice is like 70 percent tone and 30 percent noise. My voice is 95 percent noise.

But I'm not adverse to the idea of Torch Song as a musical. It would just be different. Because the play will always be there exactly as it was, and in a musical you could tell a lot of the story through songs.

In Torch Song, I did that character almost non-stop from 1978 until I made the movie in 1987. Then I had some failure, which also colors how you react to doing other things.

How time files when you's doin' all the talking.

I don't believe in the afterlife, so I do think when somebody passes, it's worthy of note.

Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith. Strangers sit in a room together and believe together.

Only one detail gave me pause. He had a heterosexual actor in mind to play [Albin]. He assured me that Douglas Hodge was a brilliant choice for the role. And since I was being handed ninety-percent of my dream production, I gave my approval. Hell , I thought, If it's no good it's only being done in this tiny fringe theatre. Take the leap. Besides, this actor is English. None of them come off as straight. What's gayer than Hugh Grant in a rom-com?

We humans are no more mysterious to surgeons than toilets are to plumbers. The cardiologist that the valve replacement was routine and I believed him. He gave me a choice between pig, cow, and manufactured. How serious could this be if it involved shopping?

As soon as I started writing, other writers stopped wanting me acting in their shows - maybe they thought I was going to rewrite them.

I got the regular call, that they were doing a Broadway musical of Hairspray, and would I come and audition. I was familiar with the movie, because at the time it came out my lover wrote for Premiere magazine, and we had to see everything.

It's through sheer will that I can sing.

I got a lovely check today from being a writer that I earned by sitting at home. That's rewarding.

A musical takes two to five years. You have to love it to put in the years.

I'm sure there's going to be some material from This Is Not Going To Be Pretty. I usually use that song to just introduce myself to the audience, although the patter in between the song is always different.

Anyone with a smart phone is a potential eyewitness cameraman capturing and transmitting stories at speeds that turn Reuter photos and traditional reporting into, well... yesterday's news.

But actually just yesterday we raised the key of one of my songs two steps up, so my voice is obviously responding. It's a muscle, and the more you use it, the more you use it right, the more you should get out of it. So yes, I sing.