Fame is protection if you go to a scary place. Fame is fun. A lot of people don't say anything and you don't know they know who you are.

Without obsession, life is nothing.

If you're a parent, I tell you how to get through Christmas. I think that if you've ever had a bad feeling about Christmas coming, I'll tell you how to deal with it. So, I think in a way it's like going to a sane psychiatrist that actually gives you some good advice, I hope!

I go to colleges all the time in America, and everyone's gay, and I think how can this be? And it's only in rich schools. In poor schools, nobody's gay.

When I was young, no one wanted to be one; now even the President of the United States would call himself an outsider. So now I'm for insiders.

So to make movies, if you're first goal is to make money, well you can! Make a tent-pole movie that China wants. But that's not the kind of thing that's really going to get your remembered. You're not going to change anything with that. You might become rich from it!

At the premiere of Hairspray on Broadway, Harvey Fierstein's mom said to my mom, "Didn't we raise great sons?" and my mother just started sobbing, because I'm sure they'd both been through other nights when people didn't say that.