It's a cliche, but there really is no handbook about the celebrity thing; you have to figure it out as you go along.

Sure I think it is healthy to speak the truth, and be who you are, and be proud of that.

People have to do things in their own time, and that's what I did.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground with me.

I am not a sad clown. I am not a sad clown.

There are some people that the press like to pick on and not just the gay press, but the press in general. And some people, the press just doesn't care about at all.

I'm still the fat kid from high school who never had a date.

It's a cliche, but there really is no handbook about the celebrity thing; you have to figure it out as you go along.

I seem to always inspire a strong reaction one way or the other.

I'm one of those old-fashioned homosexuals, not one of the newfangled ones who are born joining parades.

People think they know who I am, because I've played so many very, very out gay men on stage, and they think that's me.

I didn't know Charlie before doing the movie, but I was a huge fan of the British Queer as Folk.

People always think I'm Jewish and changed my last name from Rabinowitz.

All I can do is try to create the best show possible, and I feel we've truly done that.

Look, I'm 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math!

A video taped stage performance is just - you know, it's never gonna be the same as it is if you're sitting there live in the theatre.

As a kid, I loved 'Godot' because of the poetry and the humor and the strangeness, but then as you get older, it's much more resonant.

I don't know what goes on in their heads out in Hollywood.

I have my aluminum siding business, and that's going like a house afire.

I have to accept the fact that, no matter what I do, it's going to annoy someone.

I want the kind of career where I can move back and forth.

I'm really an honorary Jew, you know; all the best people are. I really do feel Jewish, even though I'm a Catholic. The way the Church has been behaving, I'm happy to be Jewish.

It's certainly not a shock to find that the industry has no imagination. I think people don't know what it is I do. Because half the time you're talking to people who are in their 20s, and I've been doing this for over 25 years.

My mom was Jewish, so some would call me Jewish.

One of the nicest compliments I would get very often on the street is people would say, 'I love you on 'The Good Wife.' I just can't tell whether I should like you or hate you!'

Relationships, for me, have been elusive. And I would say mostly it's been my fault. I was always more concentrated on my career. And yes, you do question people's motives. Is it just because I'm him - I'm Nathan Lane?

There's not a day in my life I'm not proud of being gay, but I just wasn't ready for that attention to be placed on it. I remember being on Oprah. Well, not on Oprah. Near Oprah. She started saying, 'Now, Nathan, you got all those girlie moves going down in 'The Birdcage,' where's all that coming from? You're so good at all that girlie stuff!'

I am not this big celebrity, but it gets really crazy. You have to go through the nuts of blowing up, in a sense, and then figuring out how to live your life with that.

I don't think I'm a celebrity. A chimpanzee could have done what I did.

If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.

A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.

The whole celebrity culture thing - I'm fascinated by, and repelled by, and yet I end up knowing about it.

Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent.

It is better for me to serve a charity as an actor or a voice, rather than at a luncheon being just a celebrity.

You don't know when you're being watched. That's one of the weird things about celebrity. It's my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

Everyone wants immediate success, immediate celebrity, and that doesn't produce what used to be artists.

It's part of the celebrity process but my life has never been as interesting or as wild as what's been printed about me.

My Brat Pack buddies and I didn't exactly handle celebrity very well. Success at an early age is far more difficult to handle than failure.

I don't have any friends and don't have any intention of making any. People will stab you in the back, mistreat you, talk about me behind your back, steal from you. And they're not really your friends. They're only there because you're a celebrity or because they want to get something from you.

I don't mean that if you're a Christian, walking close to God, you will immediately gain celebrity. you may fail as an artist, because you may not have what the public want at that time, and you have to be prepared for that.

The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.

Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away.

I feel about me like I'm one of the working people, just like you, and everybody else. I don't fit the part of a celebrity.

There's no reason that just because you're a celebrity you can't write.

I was 25 and the most popular celebrity in the world, with the possible exception of my friend Mary Pickford.

I think the more you expose yourself as a celebrity, the less interesting you are to watch in your work, because if you're putting yourself out there all the time, you're not holding anything back.

However, I'm at a very comfortable place in my career and celebrity, in that I don't have to audition as extensively as I used to for roles but yet I'm not immediately recognizable.

I'm not a celebrity. I don't call myself a celebrity. I'm an actor.

I feel like I almost didn't grow up in the business, because my parents worked so hard at sheltering us from that. I was raised in Connecticut. And I honestly wasn't aware that my dad was a celebrity until I moved to Los Angeles a year ago.