One thing's for sure: now when I look at Funny Girl, I think I was gorgeous. I was too beautiful to play Fanny Brice.

I'd take out a joint and light it. First, just faking it. Then I started lighting live joints, passing them around to the band, you know. I was great, it relieved all my tensions. And I ended up with the greatest supply of grass ever. Other acts up and down the Strip heard about what I was doing - Little Anthony and the Imperials, people like that - and started sending me the best dope in the world. I never ran out.

I don't like talking about myself and I don't like talking about the work.

Just imagine how boring life would be if we were all the same. My idea of a perfect world is one in which we really appreciated each other's differences: Short, tall; Democrat, Republican; black, white; gay, straight-a world in which all of us are equal, but definitely not the same.

I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.

I don't feel like a legend. I feel like a work in progress.

We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.