Sondheim is the Shakespeare of the musical theater world.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

Everything I experience influences everything I do.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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'm just an actor. I am nothing special.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Our actions are the ground we walk on.

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

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