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.

Family is just accident.... They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just are.

Jesus was a suicide, if you ask me.

What's so good about a heaven where, one of these days, you're going to get your embarrassing old body back?

At the heart of the failure of most plays is the inability to carry on a thoughtful conversation about your work with yourself.

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.'

Art is how a culture records its life, how it poses questions for the next generation and how it will be remembered.