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

I’ve been fortunate in my career to have performed in revivals of great musicals and to have originated roles in musicals that have in turn been revived. And I’m not dead!

George M. is where I met my dear friend Joel Grey. We connected at rehearsal one day during a five-minute break. We were both looking out the same window and we knew in five minutes that we’d made a connection.

Stephen Sondheim told me that Oscar Hammerstein believed everything that he wrote. So there’s great truth in the songs, and that’s what was so wonderful to find.

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.

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.

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.

I’m always the person who’s taking everyone else’s kid and putting them on my hip, so I’ve kinda always been a mama.

I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‘One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.’ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

I’m a mama’s boy because everything I do is with respect to my mother.

I always say I’m one of the toughest mama’s boys you’re ever gonna meet.

Any man who doesn’t love his mama can’t be no friend of mine.

Kind of wish I was dead. Maybe, I’ll blow my brains out, mama, or maybe I’ll go bowling.

I didn’t have a mother; I had a mama. I measure other women by the stature of my mama.

Mama always said a good family has one heartbeat.