Mandy Patinkin

We did a different show every night. We'd open a show, and then two weeks later we'd open the next show. And two weeks later we'd open the third show until we had all eight running. And it was just one of the richest experiences I'd ever had in my theatrical life.

Well, I'm not a critic, I'm just a worker. So, I'm always grateful for anything the critics say - good or bad.

People on both sides of any conflict believe they are right, whether it's on a TV show or in the real world.

My dream has come true, now that I have passed it on.

The great love of my life is music.

I've been very blessed in my personal life and in my career and I have never been ungrateful for what I have.

I have no problem with violence, I have no problem playing horrible people.

I desperately want to see the day today and do the best I can not miss a shred of sunlight. It'll be over before I know it.

I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.

I can achieve that by personally relating the words that I am saying to something I have known in my life.

Singing in Yiddish was a great thrill for me and came about through Joe Papp, the founder of The Public Theater.

I love my work, I love the people I work with, I do the best I can.

One of the greatest gifts that 'Homeland' has given me is it's affirming on a daily basis.

I'm active in PAX, which is a gun awareness organization. We treat gun safety as a public health issue.

The biggest public mistake I ever made was that I chose to do 'Criminal Minds' in the first place.

Movies were a struggle for me - they didn't come easy.

When you work on a text of a lesser quality, as the interpreter or the delivery person, you are obliged to try to fill it out as you see so many people do in lesser work.

I don't want people to sit and process the song. I want them to just let them bathe over them.

I got married because I wanted to do something that was more than I understood, because my feelings were more than I understood.

I'm not frightened about terrorism. I'm frightened about the roots of what we call terrorism.

I'm blessed. I have a 13-year-old girl's eye and a 14 year-old boy's eye. I've been given the gift of sight by people who decided to donate organs. I try to do as much organ-donor work as I can.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.

My sense of religion is Einstein's sense of relativity. I don't believe in God. I believe that energy never dies. So the possibility exists that you might be breathing in some other form of Moses or Buddha or Muhammad or Bobby Kennedy or Roosevelt or Martin Luther King or Jesus.

I'm on the board of directors for Peace Now, which works tirelessly between the Palestinians and the Israelis to create peace in the Middle East and we've never been closer.

The best work I can do is to take myself as much as I can out of it and get it as simple as I can.

I'm a spiritual person, I'm an America, I'm a Jew, and all of those things influence every breath I take, everywhere I go.

Music is my balance... center of my life.

I have the strength from my mother, the survivability. I have wonderful qualities from my mother - but please, Mother, forgive me - I heard judgment constantly about my father.

My mom was a great cook and great baker all her life.

I think it's fair to say I'm attracted to playing characters who are rather intense.

I'm a Jew. I'm fascinated by our culture and our history, by what made us the people we are. It influences every breath I take. It informs and guides me. Without it, I'd just be a vacuum.

I'm just an actor. I am nothing special.

In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.

I'm an obsessive hiker and I do it every day for two hours and it really helps me when it comes to learning songs or scripts.

I'm an obsessive person. I like intensity.

It's what Shakespeare's mission was - to illuminate our thoughts and struggles and bring about the possibility of getting the most we can out of a day as opposed to least in this brief moment we're here.

Isaac and I are going to Israel to ride for peace enviromental justice and a safer world for us all.

You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.

I wanted to go to a liberal arts college, I wanted to have that experience.

But I loved the theatre and I was just doing theatre 24/7 and kept dropping courses because I didn't have the time and the chancellor thought that wasn't a good idea after awhile.

Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.

I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.

Our actions are the ground we walk on.

If you told me I could only do one thing, I would choose live concerts.

Peace in the Middle East isn't going to be created by another war or violent act on the other side.

I try to get that across in the work, to try to, if I'm lucky, to make this world a little bit better for all of us before I check out. And that's if I'm lucky, I don't always get to have that privilege but I try always.

I still have the sword of Inigo Montoya - it's mine!

Everything I experience influences everything I do.

There's something about singing that I just love. It makes me feel freer than anything in the world.

I would go to war with words, not weapons. I would die talking before I lifted a weapon.

My wife will tell you that if you feel my hands before I walk on for a performance, you could chill a bottle of wine.

I'm lyrically driven, I'm not musically driven.