It sometimes feels like I'm not doing anything.

I've written several deeply personal songs this year, which I really love. Some of them came out of intense sadness. This has been an extremely difficult year for me.

I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck, based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas, and there are 20 different productions of it this year.

I don't like to produce albums. I hate producing albums, as a matter of fact, because I'm an obsessed mixer and I can't leave it alone.

As time goes by, I realize that I do trust the wind. And I often write my songs for myself.

It's an interesting line that I walk. The AIDS crisis has done a lot for my songs and made them proliferate, and my songs have contributed a lot to that cause as well.

I may not be the most famous songwriter in the world, but you know a David Friedman song when you hear it. It took me a long time to appreciate that.

When my writing really started to take off was when I made a decision that I would write only what I wanted to write, and if 10 people wanted to hear it, that's fine.

Corn ethanol can help in the short term, but it has serious limitations, and none of this is going to work if we don't dramatically improve the efficiency of our cars and trucks.

I'm not comfortable singing in front of people yet. That's going to take another 100 performances.

As a person, I'm not that hopeful, but somehow the hopeful part of me reveals itself through my songs.

There is no seam between my songs and myself-they really are me. It's not like I'm performing; I'm just singing stuff that I really believe.

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

I've been doing a lot of studying singing, and I'm thinking of recording an album containing all my old war horses and putting out a songbook at the same time.

I write and direct the Duke University Children's Hospital Benefit every year.

I fought for years and spent a fortune fighting and never got anywhere.

When I got to Broadway, I conducted five Broadway shows.

I'm trying to have everything that I put into the world be something that makes a difference in the way I want to make a difference.

I know a lot of people who have tremendous commercial success and they go directly for it. There's something that has always been difficult about that for me.

I was talking to my spiritual advisor. I got a letter from somebody who said that they were about to kill themselves, but they listened to a song of mine and it saved their lives.

Composition is definitely what I'm born to do, and it came last.

In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it's not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure.

I'm not totally altruistic. I've always had great career ambitions. But it has to come out in an organic way. If you push yourself out beyond where you are supposed to be, there's this pressure.

It sometimes feels like I'm not doing anything.

My first career was as a coach and a teacher.

I think of my songs as there to be something to move people emotionally.

I've been doing my big theater projects, which take years, and writing a song here and there.

I have been writing since I was about 20, and at first I wrote in secret and never showed anybody. I was very concerned about making a living, so I conducted.

My career keeps shifting; I keep doing the next thing and it keeps growing.

I publish my own music. I'm creating my own songbook. It works that way for me; I'm very independent.

I wanted to produce Nancy LaMott's albums, so I created my own record company.

Songwriting is the most terrifying thing to me, because you are really laying your heart out there.

For Hunchback, we needed this live, gigantic choir. So we went to London and said, This is Disney! I need singers who can sing high D's, hold them for 18 seconds, and do it 60 times!

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

We have to protect and do our utmost to fortify the walls of Judaism in the land of Israel through legislation that will guard the unique Jewish character of the state of Israel.

Sometimes we have to take on jobs that we don't love, and I always encourage any creative person to use those as the fuel to do the things that you do love to do, even if they don't pay.

In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.

If we bring together the right people, communities can flourish and wildlife can survive alongside them.

I have had time to analyze my feelings. I am certain that they are totally neurotic, sexist, silly, and a big waste of time.

What works about fairy tales is that they endure, and the great thing about fairy tales is that you can explore big, epic things that you can't really explore in other situations.

As I get older and I see all my friends starting to have children, I see them have different reactions to the material that was probably not of great interest to them when they were younger, because they're re-experiencing it through their kids.

And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.

When two people are paying close attention to each other, check out the others in the group and see who's observing. Human dynamics are amazing, but so much that you might learn is subconscious interplay.

I'm a perfectionist about being on time.

I'm glad I am a woman who once danced naked in the Mediterranean Sea at midnight.

Pakistan is alarmed by the rising Indian influence in Afghanistan, and fears that an Afghanistan cleansed of the Taliban would be an Indian client state, thus sandwiching Pakistan between two hostile countries. The paranoia of Pakistan about India's supposed dark machinations should never be underestimated.

Thomas More rarely discussed his siblings, and two of them are never mentioned by him. It is likely that they were part of that infant mortality which had provoked such concern for early baptism.

I have two daughters, and we live here in Manhattan, and having gone through the Manhattan kindergarten application process, nothing will ever rival the stress of that.

It's easy to get wrapped up in sharing everyday life with a partner. It's fun to get lost in love and romance. It's the best. But holding on to yourself while doing that is the most important thing.