No. You can't. And I can't do anything either, about my life, to change it, make it better, make me feel better about it. Like it better, make it work. But I can stop it. Shut it down, turn it off like the radio when there's nothing on I want to listen to. It's all I really have that belongs to me and I'm going to say what happens to it. And it's going to stop. And I'm going to stop it. So. Let's just have a good time.

People do think that if they avoid the truth, it might change to something better before they have to hear it.

People listen to music with cavemen ears: Is it a bird song or the call of a lion? The audience at a musical is dancing in their hearts.

Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus, and it’s hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy, and more than anything else in the world, you wanna get off. And the only reason in the world you don’t get off is it’s still fifty blocks from where you’re going. Well, I can get off right now if I want to. Because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it’s still the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. Whenever I’ve had enough, it’s my stop. I’ve had enough.

When you fight something long enough, it becomes a center pole right in your life and you count on it to be there to fight with.

My view is that musicals are love stories with great final scenes. It's just that simple. Musicals are also conflicts between two worlds. And by those criteria, 'The Color Purple' is actually exactly the kind of story that makes for a great musical. Yes, it's got hard stuff in it, but so does 'Les Miserables' and 'Phantom of the Opera.'

I grew up at the piano, and I longed to write musicals.