My mantra is, 'Don't be afraid of color.' What did it do to you? Do a color testing in alternate kinds of light you desire in the room because the pigment will change. And I refuse to believe that pale pale or white colors in a small room will buy you more square footage. Go with color all the way.

Gay actors have been playing straight since Euripides.

I didn't have any role models. I really thought I was doomed to this loveless, lonely life. I didn't know any gay people until I began doing theater.

In the dining room, next to my collection of colorful papier-mache Mardi Gras float art, hang draperies made of the New Orleans toile fabric that I designed pre-Katrina for Hazelnut.

People are easily intimidated when they decorate their home. They think it has to be one way. But there's no one way. It's your way, your style. At the end of the day, you have to live there. It's your cocoon, your nest. You have to be happy in it.

I tend to wake up in the middle of the night with ideas crying to be documented.

I did grow up in New Orleans. I grew up right on the lake, right across the levee.