“It was one of the most exciting, perfect evenings of my life, my solo debut at Carnegie Hall. And knowing we were all there to raise money for Gay Men’s Health Crisis made the evening an extraordinary experience.”

I know Mama Rose is a great role and I love having a chance to do it.

You’d look out and there’d be little babies watching the show, and boys and girls. They loved the cowboys, and they loved Annie. There were young people seeing the show for the first time. I stayed for two years because I enjoyed it so much.

I love Some Enchanted Evening, and If I Loved You. And as I sing them more and more, I find new favorites.

In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Anton Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!

I’d like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

Working on behalf of companion animals is so important. We start to realize how healing they are.

Singing lessons are like body building for your larynx.

“Into the Woods” was… a lot of running around in the woods! I can’t wait to see the show again. People didn’t realize it back then, but kids still come up to me-young people-and they talk about it. It really made its mark.

I feel strongly for gay marriage to be accepted.

I don’t smoke, I don’t drink much, I don’t eat red meat. I stay out of the sun.

We’ve been listening to Wagner, which is so great.

Animals speak with pure affection. It’s important to me to get something going in NY so we can get to be a no-kill city, and give the animals homes and more attention and love.

I love pasta with the homemade marinara sauce I had as a kid.

It Might As Well Be Spring… I used to sing that as a young girl in my voice lessons. Then I picked it up again and it spoke to me in a whole new way.

When I grew up in the ’60s, your hair had to be straight and you had to be skinny and have no boobs, and it was like not my era.

No One Is Alone by Stephen Sondheim is all about thinking for yourself and being your own person.

I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn’t identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music. They just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.

Being gay is not a crime.

I remember how being young and Black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.

I am not gay, although I wish I were, just to piss off homophobes.

To play a repressed gay man, I had to explore what life was like in an era of sexual repression.

I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman.

If anybody can find someone to love them and to help them through this difficult thing that we call life, I support that in any shape or form.

If I want to go to a party with a few male friends, it doesn’t mean I’m gay.