Quotes About Tony Awards

If the Tony Awards want to remain relevant in the American theater conversation, then they need to embrace the true diversity of voices that populate the American theater.

But I can't wait to watch the Tonys this Sunday. I'm really glad Broadway is doing so well this year, especially with its straight plays. It's been a wonderful year.

I was one of those people who watched and videotaped the Tonys every year and kept a highlight reel every year. I saw every Broadway show as a kid.

Being a kid and growing up in Cleveland, the Tonys were how you saw Broadway shows: you got to hear from each show, and that's what inspired me to live my dream, so the fact that I am getting recognition from them, it's mind-blowing.

I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, watching the Tony Awards on TV. Not just 'watching' the Tony Awards on TV - I would record them on a VHS tape and bring them in to school and show them to the other kids.

Tony Awards boost Broadway attendance and sell the shows on the road. They're the sugar to swat the fly. If you needed more explanation for the yearly ballyhoo, in the metropolitan areas where a Broadway show plays, the local economy is boosted by three and a half times the gross ticket sales. So when we're talking Tonys, we're talking moolah.

Basically, my goal in life is to be David Hyde Pierce - go to Hollywood, make some money, come back and just win some Tony Awards.

I was the teenage kid growing up in New Jersey watching the Tony Awards and thinking, 'Oh, maybe if I'm lucky I'll make it to Broadway by the time I'm 40!'

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.

My first time ever on the Tony Awards was in 1984, the year of 'The Rink.'

There's something so quirky and fun and nerdy about the Tony Awards... We're dorks being silly up there.

My microphone went out in the 2009 Tony Awards. It was my big moment, and I was so excited to perform and lead the cast; I sang 'Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat.' Every actor dreams of standing front and center on the Tony Awards, and I start to sing, and you hear this crackling. I had no idea what to do - were they going to stop a live telecast?

I went to a really small school, and it had a really small theater department. They didn't talk about Broadway. I learned about it through watching the Tony Awards.

There's a mythical status to the Tony Awards. When you're growing up as an actor, you hear about Broadway and the Tonys, but it's not something you ever expect to experience.

I taught a class about the Tony Awards at a summer theater camp the year after I graduated from high school. So, the first time I was nominated for 'Spring Awakening,' it felt like a surreal dream: it was every childhood dream I had come true. It felt like a fairy tale.

I remember watching the Tony Awards as a young girl, thinking I would never get that far but, in my heart, wanting so badly to perform on Broadway and defy the expectations of my small town.

The people I idolized I saw once a year on the Tony Awards. I would buy the cassette tapes of the various Broadway shows and scour the photos inside the recording package. That's how I exposed myself to the arts - New York and professional theater felt like a very distant thing.

You'd have to go all the way back to 1972 to find a version of me who didn't care about theater, who didn't read Playbill and watch the Tony Awards, or get why Bob Fosse's choreography was so groundbreaking that all you need to say is 'Fosse hands' and theater people know what you mean.