She [Gypsy Rose Lee] was a sophisticated self-satirist with a contagious delight in the comedy of sex. She was coy; she was sly; she always had a witty quip; she had an intensely dramatic presence.

I thought both she [Gypsy Rose Lee] and her story would be ill-served by a conventional, birth-to-death narrative, and so I structured the book like one of her stripteases: revealing a peek of shoulder, then a glimpse of knee, pulling back a bit before you go a bit further, until all is revealed at the end.

She [Gypsy Rose Lee] was a sophisticated self-satirist with a contagious delight in the comedy of sex. She was coy; she was sly; she always had a witty quip; she had an intensely dramatic presence.

An amusing city, Chicago, any way you look at it. I'm afraid we are in for the time of our lives.

Burlesque thrived during the Great Depression, and by extension, so, too, did Gypsy [Rose Lee]. Men could no longer afford to pay $5.50 to see a show on Broadway, but they could scrape together $1.00 for a matinee at a burlesque house.

One of the biggest questions to me was whether or not Gypsy the person was capable of loving anyone or anything beyond Gypsy Rose Lee the creation, and even that was a conflicted, tortured relationship.

There is nudity, of course striptease is an essential component of burlesque but it's much more complex and intelligent than a display of nudity for nudity itself. And its often laugh-out-loud funny.