Harvey Fierstein Quotes
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And I believe that you never be limited in what you do, so I like to do movies, I like to do television.
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I actually pray everyday, but I don't believe in God.
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When I went into 'Fiddler,' I wondered about the response I'd get - the backlash because I'm openly gay. There was none. I toured Canada and America, and not one single review suggested that I played the role gay or that I seemed anything but Tevye.
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I burned out on AIDS and did no AIDS work for a couple of years. I was so angry that people were still getting this disease that nobody can give you - you have to go out and get it!
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I have a lot of faith in President Obama. The thing that seems to be true of him is that he doesn't speak when you would expect him to speak. He's very measured in his response to things. He likes to get all the facts first before he shoots his mouth off. It makes me crazy; it makes a lot of people crazy.
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There are times when I don't take roles because I don't want to be perceived a certain way.
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But I'm not adverse to the idea of Torch Song as a musical. It would just be different. Because the play will always be there exactly as it was, and in a musical you could tell a lot of the story through songs.
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The world is full of more interesting things than my voice.
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Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
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Please, people, do not f- with depression. It's merciless. All it wants is to get you in a room alone and kill you. Take care of yourself.
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Pork was in 1971, and I stopped hanging out at The Factory by like 1973.
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I am thrilled - I can't stress that enough - thrilled when I see kids getting active.
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Movies are all about plot. Theater, even if it's story heavy, it's about ideas.
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When I write stuff and I help cast it, I turn away good people all the time. I may turn them down because this one's too tall and that one doesn't have a high enough voice or this one looks to old to match up with that one - there's a billion reasons not to hire somebody.
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You know, I always got offered other stuff. Not the romantic leads, obviously. But very often it's a role that's underwritten, where the character has no personality at all. And they need a character actor who can fill it in.
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In Torch Song, I did that character almost non-stop from 1978 until I made the movie in 1987. Then I had some failure, which also colors how you react to doing other things.
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It would be nice to redefine ourselves - at the moment we are drowning in diversity. That's not a bad thing, its just going to take a while before we refocus.
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Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
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My play Safe Sex was picked apart because critics thought it was untrue. It was a play in which no one had AIDS, but the characters talked about how it was going to change their lives.
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Anyone with a smart phone is a potential eyewitness cameraman capturing and transmitting stories at speeds that turn Reuter photos and traditional reporting into, well... yesterday’s news.
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A musical takes two to five years. You have to love it to put in the years.
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It's a lot of fun to play someone you don't normally think of yourself as.
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I was exposed to a mix of cultures, lots of different religions and beliefs. I was a spiritual kid and went to Indian powwows and Buddhist temples. But over a period of time, with reading and thinking, I started to feel it was all so absurd: The whole idea of life after death is ridiculous.
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Change your mind as often as possible. Just because you thought something yesterday doesn't mean you have to think it today. Don't ever become a prisoner of your own opinion
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I guess a drag queen's like an oil painting: You gotta stand back from it to get the full effect.
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I'm sure there's going to be some material from This Is Not Going To Be Pretty. I usually use that song to just introduce myself to the audience, although the patter in between the song is always different.
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The great thing about suicide is that it's not one of those things you have to do now or you lose your chance. I mean, you can always do it later.
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I have the world's worst taste in men, so now I simply have wonderful relationships of the friend kind, but trying to settle down with somebody? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm beyond that.
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As the book writer for one big smash and one big smelly flop, I always wondered if anyone knows just what goes into making a great musical. When a show is a hit, the critics trip over themselves not knowing who to laud and applaud the loudest. It's that marvelous score, those urbane lyrics, that irreplaceable star. But only when a show is a flop, does anyone notice the book writer. And then it's always our fault.
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I just don't like politics. My rule is if I can put a spotlight on something, I'll do that.
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