I just think Brian d'Arcy James is a dream come true. I've known of him ever since I saw him in 'Titanic,' and I fell crazy in love with him at that moment.

I'm kind of a dork at being able to dress myself.

I come from the Midwest, from the suburbs - growing up hanging out at the mall and looking at the corn fields across the street. I kind of was embarrassed by it for a long time. Then I decided, 'Hey, if everyone else can embrace their homeland and where they're from, I can do the same!'

You always kind of feel like you're rolling the dice as an actor.

My Mickey Mouse ears were given to me by a dear friend. They remind me of how I need to be silly.

'Closure' is the word used for a loss that's not acknowledged - and the habit this causes, physically and mentally, for anybody who is participating in that.

Any kind of grieving that is not allowed causes a break. In our culture, grieving in public is not encouraged, but in other cultures, it is done publicly. Some cultures have walls where people can cry. We don't have that. We have theatre where there's always the chance for you to face things within yourself.

I have learned that music comes in all shapes and sizes.

As long as a tune has the power to move me, I'm a lifelong fan.

I have fallen deeply in love with songs - musical theatre songs included - over the years, and this experience has taught me to hear and honor the writer's voice in my soul.

There is genuine healing in a beautifully crafted musical theatre song, like Stephen Sondheim's 'Losing My Mind,' or a pop music gem like Joni Mitchell's 'Help Me.'

The musicals on Broadway have not necessarily been true musical theater. I'm speaking generally, of course: I saw 'Spring Awakening,' and I was completely inspired by that.

I love New York City. I really do. I 'heart' New York.

I've always been inspired by Patti LuPone.

I love having a basement.

I sometimes write songs on the piano, even though I don't actually play the piano. I always hire someone to play for me whenever I decide to sing a song I have written on the piano. My song 'Rosa' is one.

It's hard being a Barbie doll all the time.

For me, in the audition, the song that you choose should make you cry. It doesn't matter why: it could be because you're happy, but it gives you that feeling that you're overflowing.

The audience fills me back up, definitely.

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

While households that make anywhere from $48,000 to $250,000 can call themselves middle class, to group such a wide range of incomes under one label, as politicians love to do, is to confuse the term entirely.

There are schoolteachers around the country that work second jobs after their teaching duties are done: one woman in North Dakota I spoke to was heading off to clean houses after the final bell in order to pay her rent.

Precariousness is not just a working-class thing.

Like politics, all status is ultimately local - people compare themselves to those they live near.

Americans overall may live better than medieval aristocrats could dream of, but that means nothing when oligarchs live in the neighborhood next door, flaunting their luxurious homes and top-quality private schools.

Going in and out of a proverbial 'poor door' - a separate entrance for income-restricted residents of mixed-income housing - of your city every day has its costs, even if the 'poor door' woman would be considered affluent in another location.

Essentially, if you are surrounded by those who 'outrank' you, it is likely to affect your identity in insidious ways.

Brand loyalty starts in the cradle and ends in the grave, as I wrote in my first book, 'Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers.'

The increasingly progressive messages in marketing campaigns are clearly a mercenary attempt to entice millennials: they are trying to be 'woke.'

To be sure, many cultural elite pastimes are easily mocked and annoying.

If we could support school curricula about social class, we might discuss the full complexity of 'wealth' within the parameters of our children's educational lives. Out of these lesson plans, we might talk more about what society values - and whether it rewards the right things.

Money and one of its embodiments, social class, are both riveting and mysterious to children. And if we don't challenge today's stigma around class status, it will warp a new generation's experience of an even more important class - the kind in which they learn. And that's one thing we simply can't afford.

The effect of robotization would be profoundly different if, say, truckers possessed their own autonomous vehicles rather than a corporation controlling them all.

Instead of working to give robots personhood status, we should concentrate on protecting our human workers. If that means developing a more cooperative approach to ownership of autonomous trucks so millions of drivers are not left out in the literal cold, so be it.

If we don't at least try to make the future more equitable, most of us will left with simply scraps.

In 'Ozark,' the truism that we are not as likely to do as well as our parents did in the past is front and center.

The daily deluge of tales of lechery and trauma holds a hidden but crucial truism: sexual harassment routinely feeds on income inequality. After all, it's much harder to exploit an equal.