He (son Jason) doesn't see me as a (gay) icon, he sees me as his mother who touches his hair too much. No, I love being an icon to anybody. Equal rights, you know?

I can't cook, at all. I would not know how to make coffee. I took cooking classes, so I know how to make chocolate soufflé, but ask me if I want to make soufflé. I let somebody else make the chocolate soufflé, and I eat it. I found that, when I took cooking classes and tried to cook, I didn't want to eat it. The joy was gone. I was always filthy with the stuff, and then had to clean it up. I don't like that.

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 find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening.

Doubt can motivate you, so don't be afraid of it. Confidence and doubt are at two ends of the scale, and you need both. They balance each other out.

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

You know, for me, the realization that two people should have the right to form a sacred union regardless of their gender was strengthened when I saw a performance of the play The Normal Heart in 1985. After feeling the love those two men had for each other, I dare anybody not to want them to get married by the end.