I was 29 and I really fell in love, I think, for the first time. I was vulnerable in a way I didn't think I could be.

I don't think America knows what a gay parent looks like. I am the gay parent. America has watched me parent my children on TV for six years. They know what kind of parent I am.

I'd love to be a dead body in the emergency room and have George Clooney go, 'This one's gone!' while he puts a sheet on me.

Well, you know, they use those words so that they can scare people "terror" and "cell."

I'm not asking that people accept homosexuality. I'm not asking that they believe like I do that it's inborn. I'm not asking that. All I'm saying is don't let these children suffer without a family because of your bias.

We need to make sure that the powers that be know that arts education is as vital and as important as geography and arithmetic. You know, it is a part of the spiritual and the soulful experience and expression of being human and it is a necessity, as necessary as water, as breathing air.

I do believe it is the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Tower Seven, building seven, which collapsed in on itself.