Quotes from Billy Porter

I've always been passionate about fashion.

I wouldn't be caught dead in red.

For me, I really feel like if there's not a real, true connection to the material, I don't need to sing it. I don't need to sing songs just because I like them anymore. I've done that.

All you need to do is turn on the news, and in five minutes, you're depressed with the state of the world. Choosing joy is a completely active choice. It doesn't just happen. You can't just say, 'I want to be happy.' You have to take action.

When you're doing what you love, it's not exhausting at all, actually. It's completely empowering and exhilarating.

We need to understand that whatever we do, we're all human beings first.

When I was younger, I did what I now call 'extreme singing.' I could do this thing where I would sing really high. I can't really do that anymore, at my age. My voice has shifted. It's changed.

For me, life is about being positive and hopeful, choosing to be joyful, choosing to be encouraging, choosing to be empowering.

I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.

I always said if I played a drag queen, I'd want to create a template with the realness they talk about in 'Paris Is Burning.'

When I had a record deal in the '90s, that was my dream - to make an album like Barbra Streisand's Broadway album - and they laughed me out of the room. Broadway wasn't cool. But artists like Michael Buble and Josh Groban have brought the classic genre back to the forefront, so I'm trying to find my way inside that market.

I'm in love with what a high heel does to a leg: how it makes a woman or a man feel. It's empowering.

I've worked with a lot of gay and lesbian organizations. I sit on the board of the Empire State Pride Agenda. I've also done a lot of work for Broadway Care/Equity Fights AIDS. I think it's important because, when we can be of service to others, it only enhances our lives. I've been helped a lot in my life.

Just because you're working does not mean you're making money. That's two very different things in show business.

Just by the nature of making the choice to be true to who I am, I'm political. Sometimes that's all you need to do: Show up and be black, gay and Christian in America and actually say it out loud. And refuse to let anything or anybody take that away from you.

If you gauge how you're doing on whether somebody is responding vocally or not, you're up a creek. You can't do that; you kind of have to be inside of your work and play the scene. And tell the story every day. Tell the story. Tell the story. Regardless of how people are responding, I'm going to tell the story.

Seeing Jennifer Holliday from 'Dreamgirls' perform on the Tony Awards telecast and later discovering Barbra Streisand by listening to her albums at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh really changed everything for me.

There was a time in the '90s where, as an African-American man, you had to be a misogynistic R&B star or a rapper, and I didn't fit into either one of those. I was advised by my label to remain closeted at that time.

I just feel like we as a human race tend to fear that which we don't understand. It's cause for a lot of bad things and bad behavior to exist on the planet. Artists have a way of touching people and changing minds in a way that sometimes other mediums don't.

For years I tried to put myself in a box, and it frustrated me, so I had to let go and let the universe take its course.

People don't see me in traditional roles; I'm not getting cast in the revival of 'Company' as Bobby.

When you grow up in the church, the only translation in that insular world that people understand is preaching. You're supposed to be a minister. So I was going down that path, and then I saw the Tonys.

I do 'sissy with a heart of gold' really well.

I don't in any way disparage any time I've had in the trenches because it really has made me the artist I am today.