Neil Patrick Harris is a superman of entertainment.

I sometimes buy albums that I don't like now, but that I know I will like. Coming out was the same thing. In high school, I thought, 'I know I'm going to have to deal with this, but I'm not confident enough now.' But when I finally did, my whole life changed.

I've avoided situations where I wouldn't have creative freedom.

I've seen things change and people forget: the history of Berlin, the history of queer struggle, the history of AIDS, the history of New York changing from an artistic powerhouse to more of a financial one now.

People know what 'Hedwig' is now, and that's wonderful. It's not the same as being swamped for being on 'The Big Bang Theory,' but it's much more comfortable.

Some people end up becoming just a conservator of the one thing they did and making sure they get their merch out and all that.

I did take comfort in the vespers and compline. I might have become a monk if I hadn't come out.

What's interesting is that some of the things I'm interested in talking about is a story which has to do with the second half of your life, which can be told through Hedwig's voice because she's older. If the timeline is consistent, she's as old as me.

The first rock stars were incredibly theatrical. Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley - they were theater artists.

It's cool when frat boys say, 'Yeah, 'Hedwig!' I'd like to see that same thing happen with 'Shortbus.'

Compared to other liberal cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam, New Yorkers are always trying to do something, make art or love or money or whatever, and they have this phobia about standing still.

Acceptance and assimilation, you know, breeds mediocrity and perhaps an even more sheep-like conformism in terms of what kind of music you're supposed to listen to if you're gay... What are you supposed to look like? What's your body supposed to look like?

I'm an honorary old Jewish lady of the West Village.

I went to theater school at Northwestern, and I was quite conservative. Reagan at the time seemed quite revolutionary, or at least a rock star: He was radical and kind of punk rock.

Getting the blood moving through your body does do wonders for your complexion.

Doing 'Hedwig' was so hard that I kind of burned out on acting.

There's nothing more Broadway than 'Hedwig.' It's very family-friendly. There's innuendo and stuff, but not more than you'd see on TV.

Nothing is a calling card. Everything is what you do. If you do it in order to get somewhere else, you're not actually doing it. If you're thinking, 'What is the weird thing I want to make with my friends?' money and other things will come later.

We're all weirdly single, middle-aged women with too much money who look to fill the void with too much shopping.

I always think that in some way, art is the best tool we have to prepare for death. It's like a sculpture that you can interpret differently every time you look at it.

'Hedwig' is unabashedly analog.

I studied meditation, knowing it would be a huge new calming skill.

Humor without sadness underneath it feels cheap and aggressive.

Chaos is the natural state, and theater tries to make sense of it, but it's got to be a little messy to be believable.

I realized that theater was the perfect thing for me, in short bursts of intense community building.

My favorite model of success is when people say, 'Nobody bought that first Velvet Underground album, but everyone who did started a band.'

It's the weird thing that actors do: You jumped across that building because the scene required it.

I certainly wanted Hedwig's world to be one where identification and categories are fluid, changing, and confusing, as they are, really, in life.

I think things are dishonest if they're not aware of sadness.

I thought, 'O.K., if I'm a valuable person and an independent entity, then I don't have to worry about what people think of me. I can reach out now.'

The think that we hung the film version all on was 'Hedwig' on tour. On stage, it's one theatre, one show. It just seemed natural to change it. In the film, we were able to go to flashback rather than have her talk to the audience. And we had the play to practice and to see where we had made mistakes.

I quickly found that I didn't really fit into 'gay culture,' as identified by many gay people, and that it can be just as confining as straight culture, not least in the way that bisexual people are told that 'they can't make up their mind.'

I would love for 'Hedwig' to be in every tiny shopping mall so every freakish kid like I was can have a broadening experience.

You get all these French directors who have all these pretty, vacuous stars of their movies - from Jean Seberg on - who have become iconic but were never really good actors.

Nowadays, the term 'selling out' doesn't exist anymore because everyone is trying to make a living.

I was brought up very Catholic, and the character of Tommy Gnosis got his name from there.

As you get older, you treasure the beautiful things of the past but also see things more clearly.

I went to a very small Catholic school. It wasn't an easy place to be growing up gay.

I have a weird propensity to know what's going to happen in the future.

I like the fact that it's like The Ramones. You just have to change your name, and you're a Ramone. You just have to put the wig on, and you're Hedwig. Women have played it. Gay men, straight men, you know.

I remember my girlfriend dropped me for the guy I thought was really cute.

I really want as many people as possible to relate to something, without compromising or dumbing down.

'Hedwig' isn't particularly based on me, but I think that it is autobiographical in terms of emotion.

I never even had a MySpace.

User-comments culture is not useful for creating original work, I think.

Some people go off to an ashram or they, you know, have a midlife crisis and buy a sports car. For me, I do 'Hedwig,' and I see it's a midlife crisis maybe, and I see what's next. And it's a good trampoline, maybe, into the next part of my life.

Coming out as a gay man, it was very much about finding my own identity and dealing with labeling.

Anger is so constructive.

The things that interest me are less to do with perhaps finding myself and more to do with surviving and mercy and forgiveness.

'Hedwig' was born in '94. I was thinking of a theater piece; Hedwig was one of the characters.